Clay Tablets
I have a new toy tool this week, a sheet feeding scanner from Fujitsu. I hope to use it to get rid of some of the paper I’ve amassed over the years. And there is a lot of it. My husband and I are both writers, plus we’ve had our own business for years and have all the IRS-required paperwork to prove it. I have nearly a dozen banker’s boxes of papers I don’t expect to ever need but am afraid to throw away. If I can scan them into digital files and keep them on one of my extra hard disk drives, then I can save a ton of space.
But I admit to some nervousness, too. At least with paper you don’t have any software format problems. Plus you know paper will last. Who’s to say what the long-term durability of DVDs and hard disk drives will be over the decades?
And I’ve experienced the problems outdated formats can cause. Remember zip disks? For a few years in the 90s that was my backup solution. Zip disks were great for a while, but pretty soon they were just a problem. My external zip drive output to a parallel cable, but after 2001, my iMacs all came without a parallel port. For years I hung onto an old Dell laptop, vintage 1996, so I could read the files. However I still had no way to get the info off the zip disks onto anything else since that machine only had a floppy disk drive (remember floppies?). Like most backups, nine tenths of the stuff was useless junk, but the other one tenth included the only copy of my book manuscript. So I hung onto the vintage Dell, afraid to get rid of it, even though it could only run Windows 98 (and just barely creaking along at that). A friend finally came to my rescue last month with a laptop that had both parallel port and a USB drive that I could plug my thumb drive into. Now the old documents are on a DVD, which I sincerely hope will have a longer shelf life than the zip disks.
Despite my trepidation at the prospect of shredding most of my old paper and shifting to digital, I feel like I have to take that step. I live in a small house, and twelve boxes of boring records are taking up space I could use for better purposes. So I’ll take my chances and hope for the best. Have any of you faced these format problems? How did you solve the issue?
I'm a writer, healthcare consultant and yoga teacher. My hobbies are cooking, gardening, blogging and books.
March 6th, 2008 at 10:33 am
I like it! The new blog look is wonderful. Your professional site… well I like the business look, but the photo, not so much. Now mind - this is just my opinion: but, as a graphic designer, I have always disliked generic “business photos of architecture, people walking, whatever. “If it’s not pertinant, leave it out” is a rule of thumb I go by. I’d much rather see a photo of you writing, perhaps from the back, or back from a sideways angle, in front of a window, in a slant of sunlight. I might increase the contrast a bit to give it an edge….
More personal - less generic, you know?
We have two feet of snow here today, and I have found a source for MULBERRIES! Dave, the orginizer of the Fiery Foods Show in Alb., knows where there are a few trees in his neck of the woods. He’s agreed to guide us to them in exchange for jam. I was worried that I would NOT find trees here. Whew! Please forgive typos - I’m on the laptop and I hate typing on this thing.