I have a 5- or 6-year-old Mustek scanner sitting on my desk that I haven't used in a long time, and with a big photo archive project looming I'm wondering how scanners have evolved over the years in terms of quality and speed, etc. To be honest I don't even know what the specs are on this old scanner: I know it cost about $100 at the time, and that it plugs into a parallel printer port, and that it works rather slowly, and has a "twain" interface. Based on a few brief checks it looks like a pretty good Cannon or Epson model can be bought nowadays for around $120. If scanners are like anything else they must have come a long way in that time. Are they much better and well worth the upgrade do you think? What I want to do is to scan many standard postcard-sized color photos at a sufficiently high resolution to allow them to fill a 19" screen without a loss of quality (actually I didn't even know this could be done until someone showed me recently; I thought "blowing up" that size of print would cause an obvious loss quality--as it did when I used the old scanner).Any information and/or recommendations from those of you who know about these things would be much appreciated. Thanks.

Paul,I was in the same boat you were about 6 months ago. When my son was born I figured that my Astra 1220P was getting a bit old so it was time for a scanner upgrade. (With kids portraits costing what they do I figured the monet I would save by purchasing one picture and than scanning it for all the grandparents and aunts/uncles would save me money).After doing some research I wound up going with the Canon LIDE30. What a great little piece of equipment. Just the speed difference alone was worth it. I went from Parrallel operation to USB 2.0. Lol. Like night and day. The resolution at max is perfect and the software interface couldnt be easier to use. The specs for it are:Flatbed, color and monochrome Scanning Element Contact Image Sensor (CIS) Light Source Three-color RGB LEDs Max. Resolutions Optical : 1200 dpi Hardware : 1200 x 2400 dpi Interpolated : 9600 x 9600 dpi Color Depth 48-bit internal/24-bit external, Grayscale - 16-bit internal/8-bit external Max. Document Size 8.5" x 11.7" Interface USB Dimensions (W x D x H) 10.1" x 15.1" x 1.3" Weight 3.3 lbs. Best part about it is I got it from WWW.Newegg.Com for $90 with FREE shipping.Couldn't be happier with it or Newegg. Best online sales in my opinion and as a system builder I use them exclusively.Hope this helpsBobby

Bobby and Paul, I too have boxes of loose photos to be scanned, now that I have made a switch to digital photography. I have been considering the possible move to a faster scanner. Like Bobby, I have a Umax Astra scanner that seems to take forever when scanning. Mine is the 1220U which I believe might have been the early USB1 models. Mine takes 30 seconds to warm up and has a 36 bit color and 12 bit grayscale mode. Now that my new computer supports and has the USB2 plugs, would moving to a newer scanner show me similar improvements in speed?Terry

Terry,GO FOR IT!! I can scan an 8x10 Picture at 1220 DPI in under a munte using USB 2.0. Besides my upgrade from a GForce3 to a 9700Pro, this has been my second best bang for the buck purchase yet.Bobby

Bobby, That is good to hear. (scanning speed) I have a ATI 9800 Pro, P4 2.8GHz, and 1 Gig of the 400 HHz DDR ram. Also have a ASUS motherboard that has a 800 MHz FSB. My AOC 9Glr 19" monitor is nearly five years old and I would like to get a larger one in the size range of your 21" SonyTerry

Bobby, thanks. I shall take a good look at that specific model. I have a second computer I was planning to use for the scanning: It's an Athlon 700 with Win 98 SE, and has a couple of USB ports on the back. I'm assuming a new scanner will work fine with that older system...unless you tell me otherwise.

Paul the only problem you may have is the older system probably doesn't offer USB 2.0. This really isn't a problem as USB 1.1 is still a whole ****load faster than the old parrallel setup we used to run. Other than that you should be fine. The only thing to remember is that if you plan on scanning at high resolutions than a minimum of 512 megs of ram is reccomended.Bobby

>The only thing to remember is that if you plan on>scanning at high resolutions than a minimum of 512 megs of ram>is reccomended.Ah, I'm glad I asked then; I'll have to take a look and see what it's got--it's less than 512 for sure. I guess I'll just have to experiment to see if we can get good reproductions of those post-card-sized photos, but it's good to know that this could be an issue. My wife will be handling the project, so she'll be using the old computer so I can keep working on the main system.Thanks again.