Practice will let you decide as you start scanning. Try a few of your own photos so you have a basic idea before you attend the shindig. Use the auto scan and see what it does. You have an upscale scanner so output should e great. If photos are small, worn, scratched or torn then I select a higher resolution or increase the size so I can work on it later. I rarely use other scanner settings, relying on my photo editing software to do these things. I recently scanned a 1968 passport black and white photo of my wife at 600% of the original size, cleaned it up and printed it as an 8 x 10 and it came out quite good IMHO. DPI. What do you intend to do with the scans? I ask because a computer reads 72 DPI but if you intend to print then that is useless and will show jaggies so if I intend to print I select 300 DPI. Again, play a little and make your choices.

Hi, snidely, I appreciate the continued food for thought re: my Windows user account password situation. :-) :-) OTOH, I'm not sure your comments reflect the conventional wisdom (at least in the online articles I've been reading, as I try to keep an open mind about these things): 1. Just because "anyone wishing entry can easily enter" doesn't mean one should make it easy for the attackers. "Anyone wishing entry can easily enter" your home and/or car as well. Are you saying you yourself, therefore, never lock your car doors or the door and windows of your home ? Are you saying your email account password is "password" ? Most people say, "Make it as hard as possible for the hackers to get at your information." I tend to agree. 2. You're right -- I don't back up my phone conversations. But not backing up emails goes against just about everything I've ever read on basic email safety/security. We all have emails that we would surely not miss if they were gone for good. Apparently, none of yours is very important. You may be one of those "read and delete" types of email readers. That's fine. (In fact, that's the way I am with my RSS feeds.) But... many other people have important information in email messages, in saved online files, etc. That's why such online services as Google, Hotmail/Skydrive, etc. have such large storage to begin with, no ?.... So that people can keep things they want/need to keep. And the email companies themselves back up your email as a precaution and advise users to do the same (via forwarding to second account, using offline client, etc.). 3. I'm not so much concerned about someone getting by Aunt Helen's email address as I am someone hacking into my account and using my email address to send something to her (virus, porn, phishing email, etc.). If my contacts see a message coming from me (or presumably so), they're more likely to open it. That could spell trouble. Again, it's a matter of basic precautions against stuff we don't want to deal with. And that's another reason why I'm moving in the direction of having all my contacts/emails offline.... so that anyone getting into my online webmail account/interface will find nothing there to work with: no contact addresses, no emails stored, no online files, etc. Everything will be offline and backed up further on CD. 4. I'm not so sure the myriads of people who have had their email accounts compromised, emails deleted, contacts bombarded with spam, porn, virus-laden emails, etc. -- and many of whom have written about the nightmare of trying to recover the account -- and the emails) -- would call it all a "slight inconvenience." Again, Mat Honan's recent experience is frightening, and so are the stories of many others. Anyway, I truly appreciate your perspective. I always want to hear the different sides of an issue so I know I'm not missing an 'angle' on whatever I'm thinking about. :-) Btw.... how did you know I have an Aunt Helen ? ;-)

It depends on what you want to do with the scan. Your scan should be at the dpi that is correct for how you will use it. Let's assume you want to scan an old 4x5 inch photo so you can reproduce it at the same size on a modern inkjet printer like an HP Photosmart: To start you need to know the dpi requirement of the printer that will give you the printer's best result. An HP Photosmart printer will max out with an input image around 200 dpi -- the same is true for most of the major brand inkjet printers. In other words dpi above 200 in a file sent to an inkjet printer is overkill -- it does no good. (You've been scanning at 150 dpi. The difference between 150 and 200 dpi is pretty minor and most people aren't going to notice it.) So, if you want to scan a 4x5 inch photo to output on an HP Photosmart printer at 4x5 inches a scan at 200 dpi would be ideal. But what if you want to scan a 4x5 inch photo to output on an HP Photosmart printer at 8x10 inches? If you scan the original at 200 dpi you will lose half your resolution when you scale it up to 8x10 -- it will only be 100 dpi. So, to get an 8x10 inch 200 dpi file to send to a Photosmart printer you need to scan your 4x5 original at 400 dpi to account for the scaling change. You see it's a direct mathematical relationship: 5 * 2 = 10 so 200 * 2 = 400.

No judgement can be made because we don't know the size of the photo that was scanned, nor can we see the original and a print of the digitized one to compare. The file size will be porprotional to the area of the scanned object plus some overhead. I've had good success scanning B/W photos at 300 dpi (dots per inch) and using 256 gray scale. A finer gray scale can be used but there won't be much difference in the final tonal scale. Scanning to a jpg format reduces file size and you can control how much reduction to make; jpg files are 'lossy'; defintion loss increases with increased file reduction. B/W photos can be scanned in color which will pick up any yellowing or color tinges at the expense of a much larger file. I have found that 256 gray scale is quite acceptable. I will switch to a color scan if I wish to preserve color tinges. (My scanner always scans in color. It then writes the digital file depending on user selection. It converts the color image to gray scale for writing the file. Therefore, once the image hs been scanned, I can flip back and forth between color and gray scale.) After a photo has been scanned, it should 'played back' in a photo editor to check the result and to correct the color or gray scale balance. If the technician did not take time to check and make adjustments, the result may be disappointing. This brings us back to your monitor. If you display the digitized file on your monitor, the result can be puzzling. For example, the picture when printed on your printer may not match what you see on the screen. That's because your monitor was not color corrected and needs to be adjusted to a standard. Some older CRT monitors may not have adjsutment range. In some cases, best result is achieved by adjusting the video display card. This is done by software supplied with the card, if it is adjustable. The quality of the copied photo depends greatly on the skill of the operator both in making the copy file and printing thereof. If you have only 10 pics or thereabouts, it may not pay to buy a scanner. If you have 50 or more photos to digitize, then a scanner purchase is recommended. Once you have a scanner and become familar with its operation, you will find uses for it.