EPSON Perfection Series Perfection V330 Film & Photo Flatbed Color Scanner

Pros: Efficient scanner for the price. Makes great scans of documents , pictures, and negatives.

Cons: If you like to tinker with things that are tempermental then this is the scanner for your. Once you finally get the scanner set up and working never touch it again. Don't even think about moving it unless you just really don't want to make any more scans.

Pros: Desirable features for the price.
Works with Linux.

Cons: Every scan has a green stripe down its entire length that makes the scan unusable. I now find that problem is well documented upon specific search. Cleaning "calibration area" does nothing to help. Sometimes line will disappear after 25-30 unusable trial scans--on/off/warmup alone does nothing for problem. Count on wasting minimum of 30 minutes.

Other Thoughts: My $25 no-name scanner for Win 3.1 works better, but it's not conveniently located and is not compatible with Linux.. This item should never have made it out of Epson's door.

Pros: It's been reliable.
Can scan photo negatives/positives
Some useful software

Cons: Cover doesn't fit very well
The bracket for the 35mm film scans doesn't line up very well with my negatives, instead of getting multiple negatives scanned at once I'm stuck doing one at a time.
Have never been able to get the scan & stitch software to do any useful stitching.

Other Thoughts: I could bump this up to 5 stars if it lasts three or more years from now.
I bought it in large part for the potential use of the scan & stitch software. That's been a bust but the text recognition software has been a really big plus and I've gotten some good use from the picture editing program.
Scanning directly to a text recognized pdf file didn't work very well so I go through a process of scanning as a jpg, straightening and cleaning up in photoshop and then using the ABBYY program for the text recognotion and save as a pdf.
Uses a USB 2.0 connection, maybe they'll start making these with USB 3.0 and you won't be waiting as long between the end of the scan and being able to work with the result.

Pros: Compared to the old clunker of a scanner I had, the V330 is fast, quiet, produces better images, and has better software. The installation process went very smoothly. I put in the CD, followed directions, and it all just worked. (This was with 64-bit W7) It even automatically checked for updates, downloaded, and installed them.

I like the software interface. It could be better...but it's not bad.

Cons: The cover doesn't press down hard enough to flatten out curled photos completely -- and every photo has a curl to it. The inside of the cover has some "give" to it, and it gives too much. The problem is readily solved by putting a book on the photo instead of the cover, but it's a minor annoyance.

The way the film frames and the white reflector surface are stored in the cover is kind of kludgy. The white reflector surface, in particular, is liable to come unhooked at the slighted provocation and flop around. This isn't all that big a deal, but it's another minor annoyance. It could probably be fixed with the application of a little tape, but what it really needs is a better latching system.

Other Thoughts: Others have commented on the weird placement of the USB and power jacks. I haven't found this to be a problem -- just odd.

Pros: A very nice scanner. Does beautiful scans of photos and magazine articles.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: Can't understand how anyone could have problems using this in Windows 64-bit. The Epson drivers install without a glitch and the scanner works perfectly!

Pros: Installed easily enough, software isnt too bad but takes some getting used to.

Cons: Can only scan 4 slides at a time

Other Thoughts: Scanned almost 4000 35mm slides and over 1000 photos in the month or so that we've had it.

Pros: Small size and low profile is what I needed because of limited desktop real estate. The scanner sits where my monitor stand used to. I mounted the monitor to the upper unit of my workstation using a swing arm wall bracket.

Good price with Newegg discount. Setup went without a hitch on Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit. Very simple to operate, and has a decent manual on the software. It took a little research to grasp which dpi setting I wanted to use.

My first scan was an old 8x10 B&W print of my parents wedding. The print had that old antique brown tone to it, but I decided to scan in Greytones...one of the options. I scanned at 600dpi using high quality jpeg setting and saved to My Pictures.

I opened the jpeg file in Windows Live Photo Gallery and did my rotating and cropping. When viewing the photo in the Gallery I was somewhat concerned about the quality...it looked blotchy. Using good quality HP paper and a HP Photosmart, the full size print looks excellent. I'm happy...

Cons: Comes with a rather large wall wart. The manual could have more technical details.

Other Thoughts: I'm not sure why the other reviewer had problems with Windows 7 64-bit. When I installed (custom) the driver software off the CD it also installed a driver update program. Before I even hooked up the hardware I was notified that a driver update was available, so I downloaded and saved the driver update, uninstalled EPSON Scan from Programs and Features, installed the driver update, hooked up the scanner, and everything works fine so far.

I'm looking forward to seeing if this scanner can do anything about my fadding old Ektachrome slides.

Pros: NONE

Cons: Doesnt work at all on Windows 7 64 Bit. Epson Support.