This is an amazingly simple scanner to use and it will not break the bank to purchase, we paid in the region of £55 for it about 18 months ago I reckon. It is a sleek black design about the size of a pad of A4 paper that looks nice and stylish. It was also very easy to set up with nice clear instructions. You simply inset the cd into your laptop that loads the software that you need. These instructyions are all set out in a quick start up guide which makes the set up childs play. The software and set up programme loads within a few minutes and connect the sacnner through a usb cable that comes with the scanner and it is ready to go. There are no other cables needed as it draws its power from the computer rather than direct from a plug.

When it comes to scanning the on screen instructions are very easy to follow, the vast majority of time I have used the auto select option which means the scanner identifies what you are scanning and does it all for you. The majority of the time I was scanning old family photos which are a mix of black and white ones from my grandparents collection and colour ones from my childhood. You can also manually select the settings as well however I have been impressed enough with the automatic selectioins to figure that the machine knows best.

There are a few neat features, if the document is too big for the plate you can scan it in two halves and then combine the image into one complete document, I have only done this once and it took a couple of attempts, but after a bit of trial and error I got there. It scans quickly, a couple of seconds at the most and then the item is ready to be edited and saved.

I have been impressed by the quality of the images, the colour resolution is pretty good and dull black and white pictures seem a bit sharper after scanning. Word documents are equally good and you can save files in pdf format as well.

There are probably more technical scanners out there on the market however for what I want to use one for this is ideal and it has been great creating old picture libraries that can then be backed up on a memory stick. For the price it has proven to be reliable and simple to use and I would certainly recommend it to anyone.