In the menu you'll find my scanning guide and from it you'll see there's a link to a more in-depth scanning guide. It links to a community written guide for Gaming Alexandria. They scan some stuff for the Video Game History Foundation. Anyway, my little Canon Lide 300 was great, but it maxes out at 1200dpi and so it starts showing small remnants of compression artifacts at that level. Really wasn't the end of the world but considering I want these scans to be the final time anyone has to rip apart these books, I want to really go bananas with doing it right.
Got this guy based on the recommendations of that group, which doesn't break the bank but isn't cheap either. Epson Perfection V600 is for sale for about $250. The Canon Lide 300, which I still do like way more than the similarly priced Epson V19, is around $110, (if you can find it, it's also an older machine.)
It makes sense there would be a quality difference, the higher end Epson is deep. It has room for better equipment, it goes up to something like 9400dpi- for god knows what reason. Reading molecular structure? To flex? It kind of sucks if you have a small space like I do, because the scanning bed isn't any bigger than my little Canon, but whatever, I just have to keep my desk more free of clutter. Here's the size comparison:
