Posted: Feb 5, 07
2:01pm
Digital imaging is one of the most exciting aspects of the technology revolution currently changing our lives. Digital pictures can be emailed, shared online, transferred onto your iPod, and so on.
But what about your prints? How do you let those in on the fun? Scanners are really inexpensive these days -- that's not the problem. The problem is that scanning a box of photos is a lengthy, tedious process, requiring superhuman reserves of patience and vast tracts of free time.
Rather than spending the next ten or so weekends at the scanner or dropping a thousand bucks on a machine that can handle 25-50 prints per minute, consider an alternative: sending your photos to be scanned by one of the new services that specializes in doing exactly that. You send them the photos; they return them along with CDs or DVDs of the scanned images.
A recent Wall Street Journal round-up of these services lists a number of services that do this; ScanMyPhotos.com, at 5 cents per print, offers the best deal by a long shot (they'll scan up to 1,000 prints for $50).
So, what do you think... would you trust one of these companies with all of your prints? Or, if you've used one of these services before, how did it work out?
And on a larger scale, how have people dealt with old prints; do you think it's important to digitize them, or are they just fine the way they are?