Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

My best friend bought me this scanner for Christmas (at my request). I picked this particular model because of the low price, high resolution, and it being a flatbed scanner that can also handle negatives. I've been using it for several days now and I have to say, I LOVE this scanner! It has to be the quietest scanner I've ever seen. I was on the phone with my mom while scanning and she never heard it. It is also fast. At the highest resolution, previewing for negative scanning takes maybe 20 seconds. The actual scan takes less than two minutes. The quality of the scans is awesome, regardless of whether you are doing flatbed scanning, color negatives, or black and white negatives (true black & white at that). Software wise, the TWAIN driver is very very nice with tons of options. It works perfectly on my XP Pro system with a fairly low end graphics card. The bundled PhotoStudio sucks, however, and I don't use it. I find Irfanview (available free on-line) works quite nicely for most of my needs, including acting as a facilitator for batch scanning to file. I have not tried the included OmniPage, however I have used an earlier version so I expect it will work quite nicely. The other review here seems to dismiss this scanner as being more cheaply made. Personally, it seems nicely made to me. If you are abusive towards your equipment, then yeah, spend twice as much for something all metal. I, however, treat my equipment well. The plastic negative holder works just fine for me, and is very easy to use. I don't see anything wrong with the plastic hinge either. It works smoothly and seems well designed. Another nice thing about this scanner is that it doesn't not weigh much at all! I like this since I have a glass desk which can't hold a ton of weight. The design is nice too. It looks nice and sleek against my blue glass. All in all, I would highly recommend this scanner for anyone looking for a good, fast all purpose scanner for under $100. Well worth the money (and the free super saving shipping is a nice bonus). Best Christmas present I got.