Your scanner is a very important part of your paperless home office. It is the key to getting data in, so you can get data out. There are two absolute must-have features in a scanner, and one that’s nice-to-have but not necessary.

The best scanner bang for your buck, and the one I use for my paperless home office is the HP Photosmart c6180 . Now, normally I don’t recommend all-in-ones, but space is a premium for us, and the scanner in this product meets all our needs and more (it scans direct to my email program, for when I want to scan and fax-by-email in one step). And more importantly, it has the two absolute must-have features you need in a scanner.

First, your scanner must have a sheet feeder. That’s the contraption on top of your scanner that you stick a bunch of papers into and have them automatically fed into the scanner. If you have ever had to scan a 30-page document using a flatbed scanner, I won’t need to tell you how useful this is. Not only does it save you a lot of opening/closing the scanner (and therefore give you back that time spent babysitting the scanner), but it is usually mounted on top of the scanner! Why is that important? Because the most common place you’ll find someone’s flatbed scanner is underneath the pile of papers its supposed to scan! Instead of bringing in a dedicated clutter magnet, get one with an awkward structure on top to help you resist temptation!

The second must-have feature is a USB drive reader or card reader. This one little feature (found only on a few models) lets you scan directly to the USB drive or media card. Instead of tying up your computer while you scan, you can drop your files into the scanner, hit “scan” and get back to work!

Finally, a nice-to-have feature is a duplexing sheet feeder, but that’s only really useful if the papers you receive are printed on both sides. Aside from credit cards and insurance documents, where the legalese is on the back of the page in 30% gray print, or scanning books, it’s not 100% necessary to have this feature.