Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I got the job of scanning four big family photo albums into digital form, maybe a bit over a thousand photos. Almost all of them were 3x5 or 4x6, but when I used my multifunction printer as a scanner, it required two separate scans, with an intermediate dragging of a border to define the final scan. It was multiple minutes (or so it seemed) for each photo, and I knew that I'd never finish without a high degree of annoyance, something not really appropriate to a family memory preservation duty. I shopped around for a photo-specific scanner, hopefully one with an auto-feeder, looking to automate as much as I could, but basically struck out. A bit of reading and a few reviews suggested that though it was minus the auto-feed, this printer could be what I was looking for. It was reasonably priced and I took a chance and ordered it. I've now got several hours of use scanning pictures of my kids and family, and am pretty happy with the unit. The big surprise was that the quality of the scan, even at the same DPI was noticeably better than the multifunction printer. Truth is, the majority of the work in this task is removing the photos from the waxy album sheets and their clear plastic covers. The scanner just keeps on cranking, and it takes about 1 minute for me to load a picture, scan it, put it on the 'done' pile, and then begin the next. Would it be faster overall with an autofeeder? Maybe a bit, but most of the time in the sequence above is for the scanner to determine the size of each photo placed on the glass, and then doing whatever it must to scan only the image. It takes two passes, just like the multifunction unit, but the the passes are automated and require no intervention beyond removing the photo when the process is complete. Photos are saved in JPG format, and the filename with its 3 digit number is auto-incremented with each new scan. I use Windows 7, and the included Epson software puts the completed scans in the 'Pictures' section of the Library. I'm almost done with the first album, so it seems likely that I'll finish in an acceptable amount of time.