I'm planning to purchase a new scanner sometime in the next few weeks, and am looking for comments and recommendations. My current scanner is an HP Scanjet 5P, flatbed-type, SCSI-connected. It works OK, but it's difficult to scan books that won't lie flat when opened (no binding "valley"). It isn't supported under Windows XP, so I have to keep switching my system back and forth between Windows 2000 and WinXP (drive racks are so cool for this - no dual-boot fussing). My current scanning/OCR software is Abby Finereader Sprint 4.0, which uses HP's Deskscan V2.9 software to actually acquire the image to be OCR'ed. For my purposes this combo works just fine and gives excellent results. (I've played with Abby Professional 6.0, but found that it kept "getting in the way," so I've stuck with Sprint.) Having said all that, it's the fact that the scanner, plus the Deskscan software, is SLOW, taking about 45 seconds or so to go from the start of the "Preview" scan to the finished "Final" scan of a page pair. After that, the actual OCR and saving of the resulting text file takes only a few seconds. Including turning the page, a single scan takes about a minute, which I've decided is too slow to keep on with. (In fact, it's the time investment that's keeping me from doing some of the thicker books I have. Scanning is BORING, and I can't face an 800-page book with my current equipment.) So, I'm looking for a scanner that's considerably faster than my current one, will handle stiffly-bound books without having to force them flat, is USB-connected, and works under Windows XP. I've Googled "book scanner", but most of the hits have been for those big, professional scanners with lights, an overhead camera, automatic page turning, etc., that seem to cost in the $20K-$40K range - a definite overkill for my needs. This search also pointed me to the Plustek Opticbook 3600, which I found mentioned in this forum's March 2005 archives, in the "Scanning/OCR Tips" thread. Comments/recommendations on this or other candidate scanners? Thanks, Al