Selecting a scanner

Prices of MFDs (Multi-Function Devices = printer + fax + scanner + photocopier) have fallen to the point that they are affordable for the home. or you may choose to buy a dedicated scanner in addition to your printer (but that is a lot of desk to take up for two devices that could be rolled into one).

Check the number of dots per inch (dpi) that it scans at. Pay no attention to 'interpolated' dpi. This is when the software guesses values between pixels to create supposedly higher resolution images. Pay attention to the optical (actual) dpi.

Also check the scan speed. The preview speed is constant (between seven and 25 seconds to preview a matt photo), but the scan speed is affected by the resolution you want. At highest resolution, scanning takes anything from 30 seconds to 15 minutes. At low resolution (150dpi) scan time is usually less than 20 seconds. Personally I'm willing to compromise on scan speed if everything else is good (likewise print speed on printers).

One thing to watch for is Total Cost of Ownership: in a printer or MFD, it boils down to "how much does it cost per page including cost of replacement ink?". In a scanner, TCO doesn't mean much. The devices are so cheap now that you should plan on replacing them every few years, rather than maintaining or repairing them.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) is the ability to recognise the words in a scanned document and turn them into computer digital text that you can use in, say, MS-Word, instead of scanning the document as just a picture. I don't use OCR. It is never 100% so you have to make corrections. More importantly you lose all the handwritten notes, stamps and other interesing detail of documents: better to just preserve them as a picture. OCR comes with most scanners: nice to have but not essential.

Fancy printing features like duplex (print both sides) are nice, but I'm going to recommend you outsource fancy book printing to an On Demand printer.

Scanners almost all come with image processing and image organising software too. These freebies are usually pretty good and may well be all you need for organising your digital archive without having to buy a package. I wouldn't use them as the basis for choosing a device, but always check out what you got after buying.

Personally I'm a Canon fan (for digital cameras as well as for MFDs). High quality, great results, reasonable running costs.

If you or your relatives have any slide photographs, please do consider getting a scanner with slides attachment - it is my only regret with my MP780. If you want great slide scanning, consider buying a dedicated film-scanner. They're more expensive, can't handle other things like documents, and have no OCR. But they will give better images, and can scan large-size transparencies (other than the usual 35mm) if someone in your family had a large-format camera.

Lastly make sure your PC has enough processing power to handle the scanner - some scanners and MFDs need a reasonably powerful PC.