[ereszet]

Shooting photos and processing them takes time but it is not necessarily my time, I let most of the burden to my computers.

I work in my home studio at a desk with my old laptop plus an infrared external keyboard (I have to get a radio keyboard one day) and a Linksys modem/router. In another room, I have a desktop computer with dual core processor. The computers are connected as a LAN through an Ethernet cable but wireless works as well (I use wireless to surf with Archos 704 wifi when I am in bed). I use Windows terminal services to operate the desktop computer from my laptop.

To my right, on another desk is my photoscanning setup: a tripod with a camera (connected to the laptop) and the v-cradle. I can turn document pages in the cradle without moving from my chair and I shoot photos with my mouse. The shooting is the only time when I need to give my full attention. After that I switch to the other computer and start the download of pictures from the camera to the computer. It takes time, but in the meantime I work with my laptop doing other things. Next, I run all the picture processing programs (like OCR, conversion to pdf, and pdflrf) on the desktop computer. It does not take my time at all. I work with my laptop, and only occassionally I switch my screen to see what is going on with the picture processing.

I do not mention all the external hard disks, a maze of cables, power supplies, UPS towers, US, various European and other adapters for different plugs, usb extensions, card readers, etc., plus a big fan to cool my laptop.

Somehow it all works most of the time. Every evening for half an hour or so I photoscan the documents that I want to have in my computer, then I OCR and index them. I have not yet met anybody else who runs that kind of paperless office (now with the Sony Reader and Archos 704 extensions). But I assure you that it works (until hard disk crashes).