Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Installing the V500 is a snap, and the scans it generates are excellent. So why am I returning it after just a day? It's too slow by a longshot, for me at least. You might have better luck or more patience. Plain scans (no dust removal, no ICE) of 35mm negatives (24-bit color, 3200dpi) took 15 minutes each, not 2-3 minutes, like many people report from similar scanners. The V500 scans paper or photos faster, but still not as fast, and with no better results, than my 1999-vintage HP6100C, including warm-up time for the HP lamp. From reports on the web, it looks like other Epson scanners have similar problems - they work well for some users but are horribly slow for others. I'm apparently one of the others. Because I didn't find any happy endings for the unlucky owners, I'm not tempted to spend more time troubleshooting. My scanner is going back. Here are some more details: a preview alone of film took anywhere from 30 seconds to more than 2 minutes. During that time, like during a full scan, Windows Task Manager shows the Epson Scan program using 99% of the CPU and loads of I/O, but not too much memory (over 2GB of RAM remained available). There could a fix, but I checked for software and driver updates, and all the Epson support site suggested was that I scan with lower resolution. The computer has good specs: XPSP2 Pro, 3GHz Pentium 4 (HT disabled), 3GB RAM, unfragmented SATA drive with lots of space, 256MB GeForce 6800 video, and nothing else on the USB 2.0 hub with the scanner. Epson technical support is only open during regular business hours M-F.