I bought an Epson Perfection V100 Scanner last week.

I needed to scan some documents that I wanted to take travelling with us. That was my main motivation. But its been on my mind to get one for a while now. Scanners are just plain useful. The big project I want to do is scan all my 35mm slides and negatives but I've been humming and hahing about what's the best scanner to get for a couple of years. I mean I only ever want to scan all that film I have once and that's it. Flatbed scanners like the Epson V700 seem to be able do the job as well as dedicated (low end) film scanners. As always with technology, it pays to wait since it just gets better. Buy only when you need it.

Since I'm not about to embark on a film scanning project for at least another year, I just needed something cheap and cheerful for document archiving. The V100 does a great job and it's only £60. I wouldn't use it for scanning film or photo's but it fine for any kind of document.

The V100 has an optical resolution of 3200 dpi. The next scanner in the product line is the V350 which has an optical resolution of 4800 dpi. I'm willing to bet that the electronics in both products are exactly the same and the V100 just has an artificial limit. You can see where I'm going right? I'm sure there must be a hack that would enable the V100 to scan at 4800 dpi. Tell me if you know how.

There are cheaper scanners but I was particularly impressed that the V100 is supported by SilverFast. They're well known as making pretty much the best scanning software around. That made it an easy decision.