As Jim Burton said, the resolution you need depends on what you want to do with the scanner. The higher the resolution, the bigger your file. If you want to put your scans out on a normal printer, a scan at 300 dpi gets you a result good enough to avoid the computer origin become obvious. Even most professional printing machines go seldom above 300 dpi, often lower (newspaper print and the like). The high resolutions are only needed for optical printing. If you want to scan for use only on the pc, remember, that most standard graphicsformats use a resolution of 72 or 96 dpi (based on the screen resolution). So, your scans will mostly be between 100 an 600 dpi. You can scan at a higher resolution an might want to reduce the resolution in Photoshop or other software, but I woudn't advice such. There might be more loss of quality then compared to scan at lower resolutions. I use an Epson Perfection 1200 Photo and am very satisfied. it comes at a reasonable price and had won several test in computer-magazines that I read (in 3 test two wins and a second place).