An individual can now connect a scanner to the home computer that will rival a professional product. Optical character recognition software has progressed to the point where you can get 99% accuracy in the scanning of a document. I first bought a scanner in 1995 and paid just over $1,000 for it. The OCR software I had was the best available and had about a 92% accuracy rate. That scanner was an HP4C and still works. (At that price, it should.) Scanners on the market today don't cost nearly as much as I paid and do a better job.