Family Tree Scanning
I recently purchased this scanner to scan pics and negatives and some old 120 negatives from the 1950's and early 1960's. It has worked better than I could have imagined in converting those slides and negatives to images , I am seeing relatives that I had not thought of in years and found dozens of pictures of folks that had passed on that up to now had long since been lost. The experience thus far, while daunting with over 1200 photos and negatives to scan, at a few minutes each, has been very positive. This is a great scanner.

OK for Photos, But Not A Great Idea for Documents
The Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner is everything it claims to be, but not much more. If you're scanning photographs or other graphic items, it gets the job done nicely, and it's reasonably quick about it. If you need to scan documents, it's not the way to go. It's too slow, and the software is not really optimized for text. It does a decent job on documents, but there's too many adjustments necessary, and it takes much longer than scanners designed specifically for documents. On the plus side, the software includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. That's a great freebie.

Epson V500 is GREAT
I was trying to transfer all of my old slides to cd using one of those mirrored boxes and a digital camera. ( What a chore!) I ran across this gem in searching Amazon, and while it is definately not the cheapest, or most expensive, it is a great product. My old slides were in very bad condition due to age and lots of mildew, but this machine did an excellant job of cleaning them up. I transfered over 1600 pictures without any problems and it was simple to use. I was transfering pics within 10 minutes out of the box.

Top Notch Scanner
My old HP Scanjet II SCSI scanner gave up the ghost so I ordered the Epson Perfection V500. It's fast, quiet and scans better than my HP used to!
My only complaint is the OCR software -- ABBYY 6.0 -- that's included for some reason won't recognize the scanner. The ABBYY website says they're up to v 10.0, so it's a pretty old version.
Epson Perfection V500 Photo Scanner
Francis Moss

Works great on slides
It took me a while to figure out. Once the software is loaded and the scanner is attached via the included USB cable you can click a shortcut on your desktop to read the manual. In order to scan slides and negatives you need to slide the white cover on the lid out and leave the black "slide" holder in. At first I couldn't figure out how to use the digital ice, but it is easy in "Home mode". Simply click the button for "Digital ice". The scans I did were 56 years old, pretty faded and full of artifacts. The program did a nice job. I have not tried photos yet, although it does scan them. I believe that the "digital ice" will only work on negative and slide scanning. It is slow to scan, but when you take into account the hours without the "ice" cleaning up the dust; scratches and particles found in scans; it is worth it. (you just don't have to do the work) When I scan 4 slides I leave for 10 minutes and come back and they are usually done. It is easy to install and worked great once I read the manual available via shortcut. NOTE: I have Windows XP. The scanner gets 5 stars for performance, but loses a star for slow scans. (at least at 720 dpi with "ice".)