I have a friend whom I describe as “the opposite of a pack rat.” I got my plentiful supply of hanging file folders from him. Despite the quantity, I will run out of them soon, which gives you an idea of my standing in the pack rat rankings. This friend would like to OCR all the paper that passes through his life and have a database of his documents. If he ever needed anything again, he could search for it. Regardless of my need for a tactile relationship with paper, I decided I’d also make good use of such a product. We had this discussion a few years ago. Last week I heard about Computhink on the radio. Their products aim for a “paperless office” and they even have a single-user product (discounted for tax season, with a scanner rebate). The basics of document imaging, indexing and retrieval all appear to be supported, plus there are annotations and security features. The next time I absent-mindedly look in vain for the search feature on my stack of manila folders, I’ll remember there’s an alternative.