Todays scanners are a quantum leap above what was going on just 5 short years ago. I am scanning old photos using a newer Lexmark X-1100 series 3 in one scanner, copier & fax that uses the 8.5 X 11 inch format with such high DPI ratings in color or black and white mode you almost reproducing the original to 99% of that original. Add to that the software packages to re-work the photos, the accuracy is shocking. This all in one Lexmark was on sale at Walmart for $89.00 yet! The other scanner I have is a big 11 X 17 inch half page format 32 bit scanner that cost me $500.00 five years ago and there is just no comparisson to the Lexmark at all the lexmark is so that far ahead. It allows you to fill the bed of the scanner completely and the software then lets you set your scanning parameters of what you want scanned than takes scant minutes plus levels of saving the images to as small as about 10K. The only dinosaur I got running here for these two beasts is a Twin Pentium II 450 dual processor server board with lots of memory and SCSI drives and its still not a slouch for getting all that processing done to post on here.