I have a small home network with two xp computers for my wife and I. Each computer has its own printer. The host computer has a printer offering low consumable costs and sharable by the client. The client computer has a not so cheap cost per page printer that can also sheetfeed scan, copy, and fax. I am thinking of adding some sort of flat bed scanner to the network to get two things. (1) The ability to scan things like books or other similar things a sheetfeed scanner cannot handle. My need for this would be very rare, extreme accuracy and color fidelity unimportant, with readable output the goal. (2) Both my wife and I have a large number of 35mm slides we would like to scan to cd-r or dvd disks. There, very high quality scanning would be the goal with some of the output used to produce quality prints of up to 8 x 10 in size. I also have a concern because I now have two dead scanners I bought years ago. Rightly or wrongly I feel both died because the scanner lamps were always on when the computer was booted up. Since 99.9999999%
of the time, I do not need scanning of any kind, I would prefer an on off switch and would not mind at all waiting a few minutes for a scanner lamp to warm up in the event I did need scanning. Can anyone please give me some advice on what I should buy and price is somewhat of an object. I will also consider buying a very cheap flatbed scanner and a decent quality film scanner, especially if I can get the latter on the used or refurbished market. And my computer does have usb, firewire, and one unused parallel port.
Any advice and user inputs appreciated.
of the time, I do not need scanning of any kind, I would prefer an on off switch and would not mind at all waiting a few minutes for a scanner lamp to warm up in the event I did need scanning. Can anyone please give me some advice on what I should buy and price is somewhat of an object. I will also consider buying a very cheap flatbed scanner and a decent quality film scanner, especially if I can get the latter on the used or refurbished market. And my computer does have usb, firewire, and one unused parallel port.
Any advice and user inputs appreciated.