OT: What does it weigh?

I just took a 500-sheet refill pack to the bathroom. Scale says 4.5lbs and it is 2" high, so ...

So _maybe_ I can lift it :-) ...Jim Thompson

Are you going to be one of those people we read about? Who forget to keep the storage locker payments up to date. And then the sheriff opens it and finds the corpses of a bunch of liberal weenies stacked up.

Yes, it's back injury bait - not light enough to be done easily, but not so heavy as to be obviously impossible.

Be safe - make it into two bundles.

Sylvia.

Sure you could but I'd wait until someone can give you a hand. Why can't you just lift half, then the other half, and marry them back together at the storage place? It's more "disk friendly".

Or send the whole chebang through the scanner and then the shredder. Why keep all this stuff?

It'd take me _months_ to scan all that I have :-(

I don't have the time... I'm too busy moving my business to the South Pacific ;-) ...Jim Thompson

As you often say, hire it done :-)

A school kid would be glad to make a little money.

Jokingly or seriously? I've moved internationally and then it's _really_ time to clean house. When the estimators come it has to be gone. Sea container freight is clocked in by the pound and each pound adds several Dollars. No matter what they estimate, it's what the longshoremen measure that counts.

You'd have to add in the wine stains, pipe tobacco crumbs, flattened spiders and whatever else lives in that old pile :-)

Imaginary enemies don't take space.

VLV

My Brother MFC can digest a rather thick stack. Some stuff won't pull in ok because it's crumpled or odd size. I have to figure out how to do intermediate individual scans and still have it go into the same big PDF file. Otherwise it'll be nearly impossible to find things back and then I might as well not do it.

Probably a 10Mpixel digital camera works but you'd end up with a huge file. Either swallow the memory footprint or run it through some stripping. Color, even grayscale, can often be turned off. But that requires calling up the file, doing it, and saving again.

A ream of paper is "about 5 pounds". And, about 2 inches thick. (depends on the "weight" of the original stock from which the paper was cut).

So, assuming you can pack your drawings as densely as "new" paper, figure 65 pounds. I have CRT's that weigh more than that...

I'm guessing 50 pounds would be closer to the truth (since the top half of the pile is probably not densely packed -- unless you have mechanically compressed it)

It takes a fair amount of time to scan documents. I've been moving all of my (very) old designs onto disk via the scanner(s). [many years ago, I started doing all "new" designs in electronic form and keeping all the supporting documents -- datasheets, etc. -- in that form].

A scanner with an automatic document feeder is a blessing. I can do about 6 or 7 pages a minute "unattended". This is a *huge* win for some of the print manuals I can't otherwise get in electronic form (at 5,000 pages per box, it takes a *long* time to scan them -- even at 6 PPM)

The real problem lies with larger documents. I can only scan up to 12x18 ("ledger"/B). The ancient D and E size system drawings are waiting for a cleverer way of getting them digitized :-/

Yes: "burn now" and "burn later"

This is different, it's a special version that links into a documentation system called PaperPort which is geared towards a paperless office.

Well, at least I've managed not to grow my paper stacks much over the last years. But it does require the guts to occasionally shred old docs.

Depends on the drawing. If it's a Japanese style schematic where they crammed everything posssible onto one sheet it won't work.

TIFF has never really caught on. I use PNG for everything I can, nice and small. And yeah, cutting grayscale to zilch does make drawings look ugly and dirty. Every speck shows.

Important tip: some versions of Acrobat (I *think* that is what I was using) won't take "wide" images (I forget what they consider "wide").

So, import the image as long/tall and narrow. Once inside (the PDF), rotate it back to the proper orientation.

(Obviously a bug -- but, thankfully, one that has a convenient workaround! :> )

TIFF with LZW will shrink it considerably. But, I am not sure if there would be enough detail in a 10Mp image (figure 300 dpi is 100Kb/sq in... so A size is ~1MB, B size would be 2M, C 4M, D 8M. But, that's *bytes* -- i.e., 64Mp)

(off the top of my head... YMMV, do not fold or staple, batteries not included, this end up)

I have found going to B&W usually hurts a bit. If you can save even *4* levels of gr[ae]y, it is more appealing.

OTOH, most utilities can't handle 2-bit TIFFs... :< (I had to write some utilities to pack and unpack to/from 8 bit just to get readers not to choke)

I use it in preparing manuals, etc. PNG is a relative newcomer. (TIFF has been around for decades)

Ah, yes! That;s what the problem is! I.e., if you scrubbed it (manually?), it would be much more presentable. I guess the greys implicitly muted these "specks"...

The dehydrator helps :-) ...Jim Thompson

The dehydrator helps :-) ...Jim Thompson

A ream (500 sheets) of 20# paper should weigh 5lbs (paper weight is the weight of four reams - 500 sheets of 17"x22").