Your Best Buys…
I obsessively read the Frys ad in The Times, though I never actually end up making the drive to the bowels of Burbank to brave the hideousness that Frys can be. Until Saturday, when they were advertising an insane deal on an HP scanner and I was able to convince Julie we should take advantage. I’ve ALWAYS wanted a scanner and have been half-heartedly researching them for the better part of a year, but the feature-sets, weird software, and wide cost-difference have put me off the purchase. But when the well-reviewed “Scanjet 4570cxi” was advertised for $30 ($30!) I figured I’d have nothing to loose! We hit Frys early (for us) on Saturday and Julie (how feels the someway about Frys that I do about Pier 1) even found a new PC game before we managed to traverse the length of the store to where they keep the scanners. What we found was an empty shelf, and while I wasn’t surprised I was still saddened as my dreams of scanning things died on the vine. Thankfully, Julie rocks and actually tracked down a salesman (!) and demanded he show her the secret stash of scanners. Actually, she was so happy (giddy even) with the impending purchase of “Roller Coaster Tycoon 3” that she sweet-talked the sales-grunt into revealing a stack of scanners (literally) hidden in a dark corner of the store. So far I am very happy with my first scanner. The TWAIN driver/software works about 80% on OS X (which is more than can be expected) and it took me all of 15 minutes to get it set up and scanning. We have now started the arduous task of scanning the hundreds (thousands?) of pictures from before we got the digital camera, and we will be posting a whole mess of random scans over the coming weeks. Yay! Scanner! (If anybody has tips on scanner workflow I’m a scanner noob and would love to hear them.)