Slide scanner

[richb at pioneer.ci.net (Rich Braun)]

Kent Borg asked:
> And is there a decent and affordable scanner that can handle slide
> Carousels?

Hmm, that'd be an interesting product.  I've noticed that the scanner
companies have been let off the hook by technical journalists:  a great wave
of media consolidation has rendered the Consumer Reports-style review impotent
lately.  I used to be able to go to zdnet and get useful information about
products I'm contemplating.  Nowadays, all you get is marketing fluff from the
PR departments at the 2 or 3 companies who have all the market share, and who
also have the clout to yank advertising from any publication that dares
criticize their product.

Sure, we have the likes of epinions and Amazon reviews available.  But PR
departments have figured out how to pollute those as well.

My beef with scanners can be summed up thus:  you can't find out how fast a
scan can be made.  I.e., if I slap an 8-1/2 x 11 color glossy into the bed and
push the button, will I get a 400dpi jpeg in 16 milliseconds?  16 seconds?  16
minutes?  The lack of accountability to the media has resulted in a near-total
lack of innovation in scanner technology.

In an era when I can turn on my TV and be treated to a 1080x1920 MPEG image
every 33 milliseconds, I expect more from a scanner than what I've seen so
far.  As a former embedded systems engineer (who among other things did demos
of a real-time frame-grabbing application using VxWorks at a 30fps frame rate,
back in the *1980s*), I don't see any technology barrier to making
near-instantaneous still-image scans.  You should press the button, and see a
full-screen image pop up without a visible delay.

If money were no object, and one wanted to scan in (let's say) a file drawer
of old financial records (10 reams double-sided), how would one accomplish
this with technology available today?

-rich