I would have a hard time tossing the scanned slides also - but understand your space limitations. I have an Epson flatbed V200 scanner that I scan slides with. LOVE IT! Love it even more with my new computer that runs so much faster (didn't have any trouble with it working on the new Windows 7 OS either) My Epson is no longer available, but the V500 is pretty much the same unit. I looked up both the Epson and the Cano Scan on Amazon. Looks like both will scan 4 slides at once. I have done large batches (hundreds - not thousands though). It take a while, but if you leave a stack, and just swap them out while you are on the computer, you can get a lot done! I like reading the reviews on Amazon - gives great reviews from people that have actually used the unit. Both the Epson and the Canon have lots of reviews. Price is very similar. I like the Epson flat bed personally. You can scan documents or photos. I find it super handy just to copy a paper when needed. It is NOT an all in one. Just a flat bed scanner. But if I need a copy of a paper, I can just hit "copy" and it will scan and send it to my printer. I scan at 600dpi - which is plenty. Unless you are going to print somthing wall size, you don't need to use the super high settings. It will just make a huge file and take a long time to scan. Make sure you have a couple back up sources for you scans if you are going to dispose of the slides. DVD's can go bad - hard drive fail... I would use at least 2 different backup methods. Here is a scan from a slide from the late 40's or early '50's. Slide had dust and a few scratches.....

Came to this website looking for updated info on the latest appliances and thought I'd check in with this thread. I'm glad I did. DISASSEMBLY My sleeper sofa (see posts above) had to be disassembled too. When I first ordered there was plenty of room for delivery, but during remodeling I decided to put in a door that was normal-sized (too narrow for the sofa). It wasn't hard to put the unit back together again on the other side, but it's more complicated than just screwing the legs back on. So I'd suggest you make sure the delivery people (or friends of yours) know what they're doing. Then it would be fine. It's not brain surgery, but it's not like playing with TinkerToys either. You're buying a relatively sophisticated mechanism, as well as something that looks good. So it makes sense to respect what you've paid for. You wouldn't let just anybody install a dishwasher, for example. But thousands of them get installed properly every day. AMERICAN LEATHER CUSTOMER SERVICE I would buy American Leather again, even after my nightmare. I accept that things will go wrong with a percentage of anything that's manufactured or delivered. My problem was with with my retailer, Foremost Furniture. At every step of the way they were careless. As in, they could not have cared less what happened once they had all their money. If you do not live in New York or the tri-state area, you cannot make this mistake. I believe AL pushed Foremost to fulfill their legal obligations in my case, thanks to this site. After I posted here, the situation was addressed. I could not get a refund--Foremost dragged this out for years, so the sofa was now officially "used"--but I got a store credit. That is not, IMHO, AL's fault. Foremost is a nightmare, so I warn anybody about their truly nasty management. But if you have a decent retailer (and do your research into their customer service record), I think AL is a very good value in every way. I love their stuff. I only come to this site when I am remodeling or need advice on purchases, so my purpose in posting is to clarify what I can and to be fair. I'm glad I didn't have to go the time and expense of taking legal action to solve my problem. It took years to address the problem; that's wrong. But once AL got involved, the problem was attended to in a reasonable time frame. And they only got involved because of this site and this thread. FWIW

I suggest speaking to a conservator who specializes in photographs. They may be able to recommend a method or product to fix the slides. If the slides can not be fixed, you can scan them and then fix the scans with photo editing software. I know it will not save the slides, but at least you will have the photos. And whatever you do, get them scanned before you or anyone else starts trying to clean them. Which brings me to the scanning: If you have a lot of photos that need to be scanned, it may be more cost effective for you to buy a scanner and do it yourself. You can get a very good scanner relatively cheaply and they are easy to use. You can get free photo editing software (Gimp) that has all the necessary features you need in order to fix the inevitable colour shifts and scratches in the photos, or if money is not an issue, you can get Photoshop or similar software.

No, flatbed scanners can't be counted on to accommodate negatives. You need to find one that has settings and physical properties that will allow negative scanning. Scanning negatives requires backlighting. I was recently on the phone with a Canon techie, and he mentioned that my scanner was so great because it takes negatives of different sizes, and it was the only one Canon made that would do that. Unfortunately, it's not being manufactured now. I took a look on Amazon and found this one, which will scan slides, negatives and medium-format panoramic film up to 6 x 22 cm. I usually have the negative holder on my scanner set to an opening of 2x3". If I want to scan a 2x2" negative, I just set it in the opening, leaving blank space around it. The preview will come up as a black rectangle, but if I draw a crop box inside the rectangle, my image will show up. I can then adjust the crop to include what I want before I click Scan. Perhaps the DPReview people can recommend other scanners. I'm also wondering if you could use a light box to "scan" the negatives with your camera. Scanning is basically the same as taking a picture. I've handled some slides this way. Because these slides were damaged (mounted under glass and now stuck to the glass--and even worse in some cases), and because I'm not using a tripod, the results aren't wonderful. But I think I could do a lot better if I put some thought into this and started out with better slides.