Epson Perfection 4490 Photo Scanner

The scanner produces nice digital files at a rather acceptable speed. The software sometimes simply refuses to communicate right away with the computer (a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo MacBook), and you have to go through the whole startup a couple of times to get it running.
After exactly 999 scans (!) it started to produce a nasty green line along the scans, which I guessed it was due to some dirt on the lamp. Since I live in Venezuela and can't reasonably expect ANY kind of technical support, I put my guess to trial. I took the top cover apart, cleaned the lamp and what looked like a small mirror with a soft brush, and - bingo! - the green line disappeared.
I have scanned so far some 1500 slides and everything is going fine so far.

This product is an excellent scanner particularly if you have a lot of 35mm slides to scan which is the reason I purchased it. It also scans photo's with excellent precision.

The scanner has 3 modes of operation: "auto," "home" and "professional. My Apple computer uses Mac OS 10.3.9. I have encountered the following problems: (a) the "home" mode does not appear to work at all; and (b) the "PDF scan" operation (direct creation of a multi-page PDF file) seems to work only in the "professional" mode.

For the price the 4490 is an excellent product. It's a bit slow at the higher resolutions but the basic resolution is adequate if you plan to make ordinary prints of the scan. Very easy to use.

I purchased the Epson 4490 scanner to digitize 35mm slides & negatives. So far I have scanned about 1500 images with great results. It is easy to use for even someone with modest computer skills. Easy hook-up to your computer, I would recommend this to anyone with alot of photos to save & share.