[Maneki Neko]

My wife wants to buy a scanner to hook up to our 17" iMac. She wants to be able to scan both 35mm negatives and prints, and I want something that doesn't come with crappy software that will eat up all my cpu/memory or suck in general.

I've been looking at the Canon 3200F or maybe the 5000F just based on my positive experience with Canon digital cameras. Anyone have any experience with these particular models? Does the basic canon software suck?

Anything else anyone can recommend?

[new newton]

I picked up an Epson 2450 last fall, after using a friend's. It's great. My main reason for purchasing it was to scan a large number of old family photos. I haven't used it since I went to 10.3 a month ago, but the drivers and software for 10.2 were great. It's got both Firewire and USB interfaces, and the Firewire interface is nice and fast. Epson's software was smart enough that I could scan as many photos as I could fit (usually 3 or 4) on the bed, with each of them scanning as a different file. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it or it's successors (3200?).

[LadyBlue]

I am quite happy my Microtek scanner ^^

I do photoshop work, and the inkings come out quite nicely.

[macamateur]

Per my experience with Microtek - if you get one, make sure all the software that comes with it is compatible with the OS you're using. I bought a Microtek ScanMaker 8700 Pro which offered OCR software. Their ad leads you to believe the OCR will work in OSX, which is what OS I wanted it for. It doesn't - it only works in Classic, which I discovered AFTER I got it - and so I had to load all the Classic software (which fortunately came with the scanner, but the ad never let on about that). After all that, neither software nor scanner can read each other in Classic.

READ THE AD. CONTACT THE VENDOR. GET 2d, 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. OPINIONS!. Check out forums for opinions. Get your $$$'s worth!