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Comment by gregncheese | Hacker News Reader

Scanning directly to a share folder? Scanning and sending to an email address.

You could come up with a list of features that are plausible but I can't imagine a world where having my scanner send an email would be more convenient than just having a scanned document directly on a computer or phone.

Brother printers can scan to network shares without Internet access. Local networking is plenty.

> but I can't imagine a world where having my scanner send an email would be more convenient than just having a scanned document directly on a computer or phone.

I have a home office laser combo - it has a touch display on it and is bulky next to - when I need to scan in receipts I just upload it to a share folder where my accountant can pick it up.

Given the capabilites of the average HN user, it would be trivial to send to a local share that is monitored and auto uploads, effectively firewalling the printer off. I do this with my "smart TV", it only has access to my web proxy and a DNS sever I control, whitelist only.

Just scanning on your computer/phone and emailing the result would not be any more effort.

I have never found a reason to do that personally. It seems like an extra step I don't need. I also don't want the printer going near a shared folder and I definitely don't want the printer's true owner (the vendor) to be handling my documents over email!

>Scanning and sending to an email address.

Who's going to be sender of that email?

Both HP and Brother offer this - it goes to a server that then sends to an email you have configured. I’d guess the vast majority of people who use the scanner do this rather than setting up a share on a home network.

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