Really appreciate your advice mondeoman.

The 7200i model looks good, we are in no rush to buy, maybe ebay prices will decrease in a month or two, so it may indeed fall within our budget.

Not sure about the software issue: is it possible to install drivers only and preview the images with, for instance, Photoshop or is it necessary to install the supplied Silverfast software (or Vuescan) for previewing? As you know a specific camera driver will allow one to preview over usb and those external camera images can be transferred and saved to the pc selectively. Guess maybe the 7200i outputs raw data from the ccd and it requires installed software within the pc to decode it?

Anyway, I'll look into the Plustek processes, specs and requirements.

Thanks again for your help,

4M2.