Looking for a good medium price scanner. I like the look of them canon ones that you can stand sideways so as to save on room are they any good?
Melv

Depends on what you are gonna use the scanner for, Melv. If just to scan an occasional picture, sounds like the convenience of the vertical set up and spacesaving is cool.

If you plan on scanning slides, materials for high resolution output (photos, line art etc) you may want to go for at least a mid range scanner. Look for one that will scan at at true 1200 DPI or better 2400 DPI non-interpolated resolution (true DPI, not "fake" dpi) Just as there are digital cameras that let you "zoom" it not a true zoom as if you had a zoom lense.

I'm happy with my Epson 3200.

I to am looking to purchase a new scanner. Something that will give me the high output that would be needed to do restoration work.

I would like the ability to scan from prints, slides, negatives, as well as line art and other hand created media.

Any other information, such as swampy's tidbit on "non-interpolated resolution", would be most welcome.

Disclaimer: Scanners I don't know much about.

I saw an Epson 4870 in action recently (it was impressive) and have read some positive reviews on it since. I believe there's a newer Epson model that just came out (or is coming out soon) = 4870 prices should be coming down.

I've had this epson for several months and am very pleased with it. It scans slides better than an old SCSI slide scanner I have and scans color prints accurately. I do believe there is a newer model out as mentioned previously

We've always been very pleased with our Epson scanners. All four are used in a professional environment and do a great job for us. I think the last one we bought (about a year ago) was the 3200 and was just under $200.

Judging by popularity it seems that epson is the way to go. Thanks for your help everybody.

I have had the Epson Perfection 2480 for about 6 months, and have been fairly happy with it up to now. Two problems I have had though - The scanner (or I suppose the software?) falsely detects the edges of slides at times and cuts the edges off the slides. I then have to scan the whole platter and select the slides manually. I haven't had this problem with the 4870 I use occassionally at work. And just this week I discovered a new problem - I was trying the technique for removing paper texture by scannning twice at 180 degree rotation. I found when I scanned the picture in the corner of the scanner the images would not fall into registration no matter how much rotation I did. However rescanning with the image in the centre of the scanner glass was far more successful (though still not a 100% exact match). So the scanner does seem to have some slight distortion as well.