Pros: Price. Excellent results when used with Vuescan (third-party software).

Cons: Quality control appears iffy (see comments below).

Overall Review: My first unit arrived DOA, but newegg.com expedited an RMA (required a quick, pleasant phone call - online RMA wasn't accepted for this product). Second unit has worked fine from Day 1. I do worry a bit about future support and availability of this scanner, since Konica-Minolta has sold off its photo assets to Sony (and discontinued the rest). A budget-priced scanner capable of excellent results.

Comments: As others have noted, you can make a laptop perform much more quickly with an upgrade like this, as well as by adding more memory. In fact, upgrades like this are, in general, much better at boosting performance than getting a new laptop with a faster CPU. I bought one of these drives to upgrade the stock 20Gb/4200 rpm drive on my laptop. I'm only on Day 1 of using it, so I can't comment on long-term reliability, but I can say the performance improvement is substantial. Programs launch much more quickly now, and XP boots more quickly. Note: The drive does exhibit a minor ticking/clicking sound when it's idle. It's a bit annoying, but I just tune it out. A bit of googling on the issue convinces me it's a normal sound for this drive, not a sign of imminent failure (but always back up your data just to be safe).