Thanks for all you input. Greatly appreciated.
The scanner I had in mind was the Minolta DiMAGE Dual IV film scanner which goes for about $300 and seems to fit my needs exactly. Some of the vocabulary used above was definately over my head so I still have some "learning" to do.
Let me apologize from the outset since this sound more like a PC question than a photography question but I figured that digital photo folks would best be able to answer. First what do you think are the optimal requirements for processing, editing, manipulating, etc digital pictures on a...