Advice on Flatbed v Film Scanners?

I want to digitize all my pictures from high school and even earlier. Does anyone have any experience with Filmstrip/slide scanners? It sounds like a cool idea, though I'm not too sure how they work. Do they process the negative and then give you normal color image? I'm not sure I want to make a 200 dollar investment in one of these machines though.

Does anyone have any suggestions of a good flatbed scanner that will cooperate with my mac. I'm looking to spend about $100.

Thanks!!

I have a hp Scanjet 2200c that I've had for close to 3 years now, it was around $127 including the cable thing I had to buy for it...at the time I bought it, it had a guarantee that if anything went wrong within 2 years I'd get a replacement, and the replacement would be the most recent model of the scanner.
It hasn't given me any trouble at all.
However, since getting a digital camera, I now find that the scan photos hardly compare to the digital camera photos. But with a photo editing program, you can doctor the pictures up pretty good.
I don't know anything about Filmstrip/slide scanners, but....my MIL is cleaning out her house and has all these slides. An uncle tried using some sort of thing that goes with his scanner to do slides....I have no idea what it is, never saw it.....he said it did a horrible job and isn't worth the trouble of trying to scan the slides, get them into his computer files then submit them to a site that makes prints.
I can't be of anymore help than that, but maybe I gave you some food for thought, so to speak.

Well I'd probably go for the regular flatbed scanner if I were you. That way if you wanted to scan other things (drawings, papers magazines etc) later on you can. I probably wouldn't buy a film scanner unless you are a photgrapher or someone who would use it a lot. Good luck.

i have a canon n6700 scanner and its great. Its good for me because there is a copy button right on the scanner itself. It makes it easy when I want to "photocopy". It was a pretty cheap scanner too and its pretty, which is always important with computer hardware.

Try these sites. They have a lot of information and over the past several years I've used the information to make personal purchases and have not been disappointed yet.

PC Connection

ZDNET

4dk

Thanks!!!