In the market for a scanner...

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#1

…and I wonder what experiences people have had with various models?

Spouse really thinks we should go with one of the combo models that includes a printer (our current printer really sucks), but I worry about the scanner and printer not being as good as they would be separately.

I scan (mostly) text to convert to PDFs (part of project: get all of those papers out of the living room), but the scanner I’m using now is at my U’s library, so it’s not particularly convenient (nor is it always available…). I’d like to scan pictures as well, but I feel weird bringing personal photos to the library to scan.

We’re also in the cheap price range - we don’t have a lot of extra cash to spend on this, so we’re watching for deals.

Any recommendations (or condemnations) would be greatly appreciated.

#2

About 6 months ago, I bought a new Canon CanoScan LiDE Color Image Scanner for $70. It’s really fast and quite good. It even has a button for automatic conversion to PDF. I’ve also used it to scan old family photos with great resolution. I got it to replace the Canon scanner that I had for 9 years before that. It was still working after all of that time, since I kept updating the drivers, but it was slow. I’m sure that the model numbers have gone up and the prices have gone down since I bought mine.