Lurking within my pencil drawer are some photos of a vacation we took to Hawaii two years ago. They sat on my scanner for about 6 months waiting to be scanned, so we could put them into an online photo album.
I have an old scanner, with no automatic anything. No "one-touch" scanning, automatic feeders or adapters on that thing, no sir. So the pictures moved from the top of the scanner into the drawer. I never got around to scanning them in and I got sick of looking at yet another pile of stuff representing yet another task left undone.
Until today that is. One of the benefits of writing about technology for magazines and Web sites is that sometimes I get to play with other people’s technology for nothing. Today I’m testing out a new scanner that has an automatic photo feeder. So as I write this, the pile of photos are scanning.
I’m not completely convinced that the software on this thing is any good, but it does seem to work as advertised most of the time. When it works, it’s a whole lot easier than scanning each photo individually the old fashioned way. But it’s only easier when the scanner doesn’t jam or have mysterious beeping freak-outs. Twelve error messages later, I think it’s time to turn it off and let it rest.
Sometimes with technology, you just don’t know if the failure is you or the machine.