I guess I've put off buying a scanner long enough.  I was reading the thread where scanned pictures from Vietnam were posted, and I thought it would be a good idea to scan mine, for preservation if nothing else.  Sooo, I'm now looking for recommendations, preferably in the $200 range.

Take a look at the Canon CanoScan N1200 series.  Excellent scan quality and it takes its power off of the USB port, so no extra power cord to mess with.  I've used it with my laptop running off of batteries where I didn't have access to AC power and it has worked great.

HP Scanjet 4300cxi (or whatever the model # is now). Sweet scanner. Pick mine up at Best Buy.

Pictures I scan look crystal clear.

Av.

you'll get perfectly satisfactory results from any name brand scanner capable of 600x600 resolution and 32million colors or better, and you should be able to do it for well under 200.

peronally i prefer a flatbed, you can scan anything you can put on it, including handguns!

I'm not computer savvy, but to me HP products seem to always work and have the best support.

I tried a cheaper scanner, it didn't have shielded wire and the computers frequency got into the scanner and caused it to malfunction, the machine was horseshit.

Someone that knows puters could have got the cheaper one to work but I couldn't. I got the HP home, plugged in all the shielded wires, installed the software a new driver from their site and was ready to scan.

I went for the HP 6300C(SE), which was $399 when I bought it in July 2000. Good quality scans. They are probably way less now. 1200 dpi optical, 1200 x 2400 dpi hardware resolution.