This scanner was much more expensive than any previous scanner I had, but it had all the qualities I needed after looking at all the reviews.It also had the Canon name whose products I am always pleased with. I went ahead and bought it and am very happy with it. A couple of small things which I like very much is the ability to switch it on and off with a button on the scanner (which none of my previous ones had), and the lid will stay up on its own, so you have no need to hold the lid up with one hand, and carefully place the document or photo with the other.
Another good point is that it will copy a printed document perfectly - with previous scanners I have always had to fiddle with the colours to get the white paper colour and any other colours in the document to be true to the original (maybe I'm a bit picky), and it does this in the Auto Scan mode! One slight annoyance is that it occasionally loses about 1 cm. of the top of a document if it's less than A4 size. However, just move it out from the top edge and it scans correctly.
I did scan one old letter which had aged into an uneven and mottled colour of light brown, and it copied it as yellow, so I had to adjust the colour.
Scanning photos I can't fault it. They come out perfectly.
I was also quite pleased that Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 came with it. I already had Elements 6, which I paid about £30 for (I think) about 3 years ago, so was very happy to have the latest version.
I don't use OCR much but I tried it, and it does provide an editable document. However, it only recognises the words. It does not copy any logos or graphics on the document.
I haven't tried scanning negatives, so I can't comment.
A very good scanner, and I would have given it 5 stars except that for the price I suppose it should be expected to be a cut above the rest.