Just got an email saying that the two items ordered are not going to be arriving. That, in spite of the fact that Amazon.com still says that the pricier item is in stock. So why did I NOT GET my most important Christmas gift? Will not do business with this company again. Just too disappointing.

I got the Epson V500 Photo today, and within 30 minutes, I had it up and scanning. As far as I can tell, there are no problems with the set-up, the interface with my Mac, the Epson software, or the quality of the scans. The construction requires the lid to be unplugged to take it off for scanning anything that's extremely thick, but other than that, the scanner's perfect. I was a little nervous about the purchase, having read about problems other users (particularly Mac users) had encountered with Epson scanners, but so far, I'm very pleased with mine.

I used this scanner to create images from 40 year old 35 mm slides for posting on the Internet. I am extremely pleased with the results. Being able to scan four slides at a time was a real time-saver. Documentation is a bit skimpy and I was scratching my head at times while trying to get my first results, but after an hour or so it all made sense. If you want to salvage a life time's worth of slides or photos before they deteriorate, the V500 will do it for you and at a reasonable cost.

I have used this scanner to scan in my grandmothers photos. These were photos she has collected over the past 80 years and they came in types of prints. A wide range of color and black & white film size, shape, quality and type, even pollards. Some images were so faded you could hardly see the colors. I have scanned in a total of 1600 photos. I used the auto settings (increasing the dpi for more important images) and turned on the color correction filter for the older faded images. They all scanned in marvelously in fact most of the old faded images scanned in much crisper and vivid than the original photo. I did find if you try to use the color correction filter on the photos that don't need color correction the color will be distorted and bad so only use the filter when you need it. I had scanned my photo albums in using another Cannon scanner (I paid a lot more for than this one) a couple of years ago and I am much happier with this scanner. The old one clouded up under the glass after a few days use the result was hazy scans, I did not have this problem with this scanner. It is quick and the quality is excellent I highly recommend it. (I have had this scanner for 1.5 months)

I have not used the negative scanning feature yet so I can not say anything about it.

I just replaced my old workhorse Epson Perfection 3170 scanner with this V500. I agree with the other reviewers about the performance of the machine, and the power of Digital Ice, which I also have on a dedicated Nikon film scanner. It's terrific to have this available on a desktop unit.

The scanner is quiet and efficient. (When you set it up, follow the directions closely, and don't forget to slide the locks on both the inside and and back of the unit.)

The scanner does include Optical Character Recognition software, but it is not incorporated into the scanning screen, so it took me a while to find it. If you want to scan documents into Word, look for the separate icon for the ABBYY Fine Print software interface.

Epson scanners are great. I'm looking forward to enjoying this one for a long time.

Optical Character Recognition Software

Abbyy Finreader 9.0 Professional
ScanSoft PaperPort 11
Abbyy USA ScanTo Office
OmniPage 16 OCR Software

Digital Document Software
Adobe Acrobat Professional 9

Photo Processing Software
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Upgrade
Adobe Photoshop Elements 7
PhotoPlus X2 Digital Studio
Paint Shop Pro Photo X2