I paid full price for this scanner (a little over $100 at the time) and I still think it
is a remarkable bargain. A refurb unit should be an even better deal. It's very low profile and I really love the fact that it doesn't need to be plugged into the wall. You can just whip it out when you need it, plug it into your USB port, and you are done. The scanning software works fine and has a number of options to tweak the image before saving it (as a PICT, Jpeg, or other formats.) I haven't tried the OCR software that came with it, though. The color and quality is really good even at low resolutions. This is just a great consumer scanner. You just press the button on the scanner to call up the program on your Mac; very convenient. I think most scanners these days are more than adequate for home use, but the Canon's small size and convenient lack of power supply make it especially sweet. And I'd like to think that the 42-bit color is in some sense superior to the 36-bit that seems to be the low-end norm, but in practice I suspect I probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference.