I got this in August for home use and I am pretty impressed so far! I use it specifically for electronic filing and as a substitute for a fax, not for photos or graphic arts. What I wanted was to grab a stack of papers, drop them in, press a button, and have a PDF just materialize in a directory without having to dork around making various selections in Windows. A low interaction electronic filing system. And that's exactly what I got! The scanner performance is pretty good in my opinion - probably 2 seconds per page, and it scans both sides at once. The biggest batch it scanned was almost 30 sheets. Blank pages are _usually_ removed and upside-down pages are _usually_ righted. I've fed it legal and letter pages in the same batch with skinny drug store receipts, glossy color flyers, etc. and it _usually_ handles them as you'd hope. The big gotcha here is that different length paper can confuse it into thinking it's pulled 2 sheets at once. This is resolved by putting the longest sheet first, by using the carrier sheet, or by manually correcting the misfeed. Outside of that specific case, I've only had it misfeed three or four times (out of 70-80 scans). Many of the "usuallys" can be tweaked in the software settings if you'd like to tinker. I can't comment much on the software. I basically set the DPI, OCR, and file handling settings once and it always does that when I push the scanner button. This set up was a pain and I don't even remember how I got it working. But now it works without hiccup. OCR takes up to ~5 minutes on a 20 page, text-heavy document (I have an Athlon II X4). Most other software features - such as automatically extracting contact information from business cards and storing it in a cardbase - I've never even tried. So all that's nice but how could a $400+ scanner make any kind of sense for regular ol' home use? Well, maybe it doesn't for you. Here's my situation: I'm a keeper. I keep all the paperwork for my auto maintenance, mortgage, taxes, yearly benefits elections, etc. I keep all my paystubs, drawings from my niece, etc. I have 14 years of such items. Whatever compulsion makes me do that, it's easier to appease than to fight. At least if the system is easy and reliable, which it has been so far! I already have a decent file cabinet to help keep things under control. For similar money, going electronic this time seemed smarter. Update (12/27/2011): Scanning color & pictures David Ventimiglia asked how well it scans certain color documents, so I've uploaded some samples. The images were scanned to jpeg (instead of PDF) but otherwise use the software defaults. In my opinion, the scans are great for electronic reference and record keeping, where you care more about the document content than the condition. That said, there are a couple issues with using this for pictures so we might as well look at them: * There's a thin purple streak on the left side of the magazine article. I see this on occasion with color pictures but not consistently and not on bright backgrounds. The streak is usually in the same place. I'm not sure if it's the scanner or the image processing software. * There's some streaking & discoloration at the leading edge of two items. The discoloration seems proportional to the glossiness of the material. The 4x6 is the worst, and it's pretty stiff paper and extremely glossy. That magazine article is compliant but still pretty glossy. I've tried some low-gloss coupon fliers and magazine pages and the problem doesn't appear there. In fact, today's the first time I've ever noticed it. I'm guessing it's reflectance from the scan lamp. In the end, I'm still pleased with the results from an eDocument perspective. But I would look to a quality photo scanner if you needed perfect pics!