If you are a Vista user, you may be aware that some of your peripherals didn't work with your new computer, esp. if you bought it last year. Such was my case, in March 2008, when I replaced my three year old XP. Once the Vista was up and running, I was a happy camper....the 20" monitor was lovely and the printer worked with it. Then I discovered the scanner didn't because there was no driver from Canon for this computer. At the same time, I found out my XP was under a four year warranty (which I had forgotten), so a repairman came and the problem was fixed. Now, with two computers, the scanning was done on the old XP, the images transferred via flash-drive to the Vista. The whole thing was so time consuming, I pretty much gave up on scanning.
Yesterday, a light bulb went off in my head, and I decided to check Canon's web site. Yes, they now had new drivers and software for my scanner that were compatible with the Vista. The updated driver was October 2008! For an entire year I did next to no scanning. Since this morning, I have gone crazy with it. Recently, because of the blog, I was thinking about purchasing a new scanner. The moral, check back (more often than 1 1/2 yrs.) with the manufacturer for updates. You might get lucky.