Revised estimate: 25,000 pages. That's really about 17,000 sheets of paper, about half of which will be scanned duplex. And that is just the beginning, the files she had at her house. Then there are the files at her office. And let's not forget the storage unit full of files as well. Probably a quarter million page images by the time we're done.

Good news is that the *.pdf file format is quite compact -- the first 2200 images are taking just 240 MB. The whole thing ought to take no more than 30 GB.

It is taking longer to scan them in than I had anticipated, simply because the prep work takes longer than the scanning. About half the originals are stapled in booklet form, and I have to remove the staples and cut the booklets in half with scissors so they will go through the scanner. With the prep and the scanning, plus fixing the occasional paper jam, I'm averaging about 300 pages per hour. That's about 800 hours, I'm limited to about 20 hours per week (otherwise I get penalized by Social Security for too much income) so this little temp job will be good for about nine months. Perfect.

tanstaafl.