Abstract: Disclosed is a method for conserving power in a battery-powered electronic appliance having a communications interface including receive mode circuitry and a battery that supplies power to the receive mode circuitry when the receive mode circuitry is enabled. Upon power up of the appliance, the communications interface is initialized, and the receive mode circuitry is enabled to operate in a receive mode. A predetermined enable time is then timed. When the predetermined enable time expires, the receive mode circuitry is disabled.

Abstract: Network scanner software that accesses scanners over a network to remotely scan a document. Once a scanner is reserved, no other computer system can access the scanner. The computer system to which the scanner is connected changes the appearance of an icon representing the scanner to indicate that the scanner is reserved. If a user of the computer system moves the cursor over the icon, a pop-up window is displayed with the name of the computer system that has the scanner reserved. Once a scanner is reserved, a user may place a document into the scanner, push a button on the scanner, whereupon the scanner scans the document and sends the scanned data to the computer system that reserved the scanner. A user may reserve a scanner, start a timer, and when the timer expires, the document in the scanner is scanned and the data returned to the computer system.