Digital paper for our current stone age?

[wirednuts]

ok, im sure sometime in the future we will have some type of disposable digital paper that you can update via wifi or whatever... but i am thinking current tech here.

what i want is something for work. we work off prints and detail drawings, and we regularly need a way to copy pages and give out to new employees who dont know whats going on.

the problem is, the copier is always out at the job trailer and it takes a long time to do it.

so, i bought on of these- http://www.amazon.com/Ion-ISC12-Docu...2368085&sr=1-1 and it turns out this thing is absolutely awesome. it is PERFECT for scanning the things we need.

now i just need a way to make copies. i thought about a portable inkjet printer, which would work but i dont like the idea of costly replacement ink, and i dont like the idea of inkjet printers period (they always break eventually, or clog)

so i think im down to either $100 chinese android tablets, or digital photo frames. just put the sd card in the scanner, scan, and put sd card back in photo frame or tablet. done. employee would have that for as long as they need it.

what would be best though? android tablets can rotate and zoom of course... but can any digital photo frames do that? android tablets also browse the web and a bunch of other shit we dont need people doing... so i do like the idea of photo frames. the would definitely need to pan, zoom and rotate though.

any other ideas maybe? trying to keep the costs under $100. we only need one scanner, so thats taken care of.

 

[gsaldivar]

Your options are severely limited by your budget.

Get the smallest laser printer you can find (HP 1102w or Samsung 1660/1665 would be ideal, but I think only the slightly larger Brother HL-2240 fits in your budget) and include it as part of your portable arsenal.

If you are trying to keep costs to a bare minimum, be sure to check for the availability of cheap generic toner cartridges. They are widely available for the Brother, but harder to find for the HP.

Good luck.

 

[corkyg]

Why not keep copies of all these docs in PDF format in the "Cloud" and let the troops download them or access them on line?

 

[mfenn]

$100 per person or $100 total? $100 per person gets you a Kindle which can read PDFs

 

[wirednuts]

100 per person. The problem with cloud storage is we don't always know what info we will need daily, and sometimes we need scans from other contractors prints, plus wifi is not always available

 

[mfenn]

At $100 per person, the Kindle (or another e-reader) is definitely the way to go IMHO. Just convert whatever documents you need to PDF (with any of a multitude of free tools) and load them up via USB.

 

[wirednuts]

looks like the kindle displays jpegs too, so thats perfect as that is what my scanner saves as.

what i envision is a worker coming to the work table, looking at the specs he needs, pops his microsd card into the hand scanner and grabs whatever he needs. then back off to the workstation with his digital photos. this way there wont be much time lost or excuses left for not remembering what goes where.

i suppose a deactivated android phone would work too... maybe a lot of them that have bad esn's could be had cheap....