I would also consider sending them out to be done, or letting a photo lab do them for you. The lack of control can be a little scary, but it is slow tedious work.

35mm negatives can be put on CD very quickly and easily in-store many places. Slides are considerably slower. Somewhere in the range of 10 cents per slide or frame?

We bought my mom a slide scanner out of that Hammacher Schlemmer catalog last year--she hasn't used it much, but I think she liked it.

the Epson Perfection v300 comes highly rated in the Mac magazines reviews.  I bought one this summer, on line for $100- no one in Duluth carries them.  You can scan 5 slides at a time.  It also does a nice job on restoring old photos.

Barrett is right about formats. CDs and DVDs have a shelf-life of under 10 years. The longest lasting backups are tape and hard drive.

The rule is if you want it for more than a year, keep it in more than one place.

sam's club = wal mart.

no thanks.

this post and comments are awesome, for starters.  And I agree that the best reason to scan them is maybe to catalogue them and give 'em new life but not to have a permanent archive.

Now, this is a possible hijack ... One of the first CD's I ever bought was the original "A Very Special Christmas" which I got in perhaps 1988.  I had the case out recently and am struck by how dense it is, and in those days the discs themselves were much much heavier, too.  Maybe twice as much material as now.  Fast forward, I have some CD-R's I've been giving people for the holidays.  The discs were cheap, but they're also _cheap_, if you know what I mean.  I can my hand through them in the light.  That's apparently a test of quality for crystal but not for CD-Rs.