I hate doing taxes to such an extent that for the second year in a row, I’ve filed an extension. Most of this has to do with the fact that I start out organized each year, and then all my receipts, etc, deteriorate into stacks of paper everywhere. I hate paper.
While I was getting my taxes together a couple months back to take to the accountant, I had a brilliant idea. I needed a portable scanner. If I can just scan my receipts and save them out to my Evernote Receipts notebook, I’m set. Everything then is digital and searchable – just the way I like it. So I started pricing portable scanners.
There are some neat ones out there, but they were all a little out of my price range. Then I stumbled upon Doxie.
Doxie is small and comes with a carrying case. It has only one cable – a USB cable that connects it to your Mac OR PC and also provides the power. Yes, it’s a cute scanner, with the little hearts, but it also comes with skins in case it’s a little TOO cutesy for you. Personally, I like the hearts. Even the required software is rather sassy.
Shortly after receiving my Doxie, I started scanning in all my travel receipts from the front half of 2010. True to my nature, they were scattered everywhere in my office (and I may not have found them all yet). Now, however, they are all scanned in as PDFs and Doxie immediately sent the PDFs to my Evernote.
One of the neatest things about Doxie is its ability to share instantly to the app of your choice – including the ones in the Cloud. If I’m scanning in photos, I can send them to iPhoto or one of my Flickr accounts. I can even send it to Doxie’s cloud hosting service, where it will create a condensed URL for me and send that to Twitter. It also scans out to Google Docs (which I use extensively), to Scrib’d, Picasa, and to Acrobat and Evernote locally (amongst others).
It was a speedy scanner, getting me through 5 months of receipts in around 2 hours, including my various digging, finding, and organizing in that time period. It takes up to 8×11 or A4 and as small as a business card. It required a download of software, which I liked because that gave me the latest and great version.
In fact, the only downside to Doxie that I can find right now is that it does have to plug in via USB. Some of the more expensive versions are self-sufficient, but USB is a small price to pay for, well, a small price. Of course, the USB thing (and the need for specific software) does preclude me from using the Doxie with my iPad.
Doxie fits in several of my purses, and definitely my various pieces of carry-on luggage. Since acquiring the Doxie, I’ve carried it with me on multiple business trips. If I have a laptop with me, then I grab a point during each trip to scan in my receipts. Maybe next year, doing my taxes won’t be quite as painful. If I’ve just carried the iPad however, then I can’t bring the Doxie.
Doxie costs $129 and is available only on the Doxie web site.
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Cheers!
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