Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

First, let me say that I've had a number of scanners over the years, and I did extensive comparative research prior to purchasing the Plustek 8100. My research indicated that this was likely a very good scanner for the money. After I got the scanner, it seemed true. I had read that the controls were difficult and had a steep learning curve, which was alright for me because I don't mind reading and testing things until they work as intended. For the first three months this scanner did great. In the fourth month everything changed. I have literally tens of thousands of 35mm color slides and B&W strips. The scanner started acting up and after doing about 8-12 scans it would start to fail, showing horizontal bands across the image. I did some research and found comments by Plustek that this could be electrical. I made sure to unplug other devices around it, and I purchased a snap on toroid shield to try to eliminate unintended electrical impulses. This had zero impact. I contact Plustek, and a week later they emailed me to tell me that it could be electrical and that I should make sure no other devices were active near it, and they told me to use the correct cord (I have only used the cord that came with the device). I immediately wrote back and described the defect and my attempts to fix it, and said I wanted to find out about a replacement. That was two weeks ago and they never responded. OK, so I got accustomed to only doing 8-12 scans before it starts to fail and needs to be turned off for 2 hours to recover. Today a new problem popped up. I'm getting a single pixel line through each image. The line is NOT a scratch, and I've heard of other users having this same problem. So now I am REALLY fed up. I have thousands of images to scan (for commercial purposes) and I can't deal with a scanner that is so incredibly temperamental and problematic, on top of which the customer service is seriously negligent. Maybe I have the wring driver? It's impossible for me to know because their web page makes it impossible to actually download and install any update. It takes a lot for me to write negative review like this. They deserve it.