[marcia]

Read a few posts on the forum about people scanning pictures and childrens art collections to keep a copy - 'just in case' things got lost in move to NZ.

We have never had a scanner but I think it may be a good idea to do this, we have so many photos and pieces of 'art' that I wouldn't want to lose.

So being the total novice at this sort of thing, can anyone give me tips on what to look for when buying one, what all the terminolgy means, and any good, easy to use scanners that people could recommend.

[StevieD]

Hiya Marcia! We have a Lexmark printer/scanner/copier. There are loads of these on the market now, and are really easy to use. Depends on what you want to pay for these things, but the quality of most of them is now very good.

Things to look for - DPI, like pixels on a digicam, the more there are, the better the quality of the scanned picture/documents, but that means more file space needed.
The rest is really how easy you find it, how it looks (yes that does mean a lot to some people!), what software you get with it etc.
You know what Jan is like for scrapbooking, and she absolutely hammers the scanner with all of our old photos. We now have loads stored on the pc for future use.

Good luck Marcia. Any questions gimme a shout.

Steve

[katandbob]

Marcia, if you already have a printer, just buy a cheap scanner - they can start as little as £39!

thats what we paid for ours and it scans great then when they breakdown its no hardship (spent mega bucks on the last one, it was gona cost more than we bought it for to fix and this ones as good - if not quicker)
we have a CannonscanLiDE20
see pic of daughter flowers age 5