Veho VFS-001me 5 Mega pixel slide and negative scanner, USB 2, Vista

Purchased this as it was cheapest on the market for what is does. I had 100 slides and about 200 negs to scan to my PC to archieve and print.

For the money I would say this is great value. Very quick to scan and image quality is good (like any of these devices it is dependant of original slide/neg).

Bundled software (arcsoft PI6.0) is resonable good, although I used photoshop to touch up and edit my old photo's

Had no technical problems installing and using so well pleased with my transaction....A+

Like other Reviewers, I didn't want to pay a lot but took a chance on this item producing at least an acceptable job of scanning slides. Amazon were the cheapest suppliers I could find, by the way. No trouble installing, but be careful to make sure the slide holder is properly clicked closed - 2 sides as well as central clip - or it won't feed into the scanner. First results on 40 year old slides were very good. I chose the highest resolution so the file sizes were quite large. I suspect I could get away with a smaller file size and still get acceptable results.
Two points to bear in mind. Before you 'grab' the image, you need to wait about 10 seconds for the 'auto white balance' to optimize. Then transfer the image to your PC, which takes another 10 secs. You will find that this 'raw' image is a bit contrasty. This can be improved a lot by optimizing the image either in the bundled image processing software, or any other. I used Paintshop Pro. If you optimize the contrast, the image becomes much more natural.
Would I recommend this scanner? Yes. For the money you won't get better. And yes the box it came in is cool, as they say!

First of all, whenever you read a review saying that it's too slow to capture an image, it's simply because their PC only has old (slow) USB 1.0 ports. If your PC is modern (e.g. approx 3 years old or less) then it will have USB2.0, and it will transfer images VERY quickly and easily. => Do not worry about this!

When I got this, I installed the latest driver (from the veho-uk website) and then scanned in about 3 or 4 negative films. The results were not amazing, but they are perfectly acceptable for my needs. For the money, I was perfectly happy with the results from 35mm *negatives*.

However, then I tried scanning in some 35mm Kodak *slides*, from the mid-1960's. Bright and sunny slides looked perfectly OK. However, anything other than a bright and sunny day looked too dark. My experience in using 'gamma correction' in Paintshop Pro ;-) fixed some of these pictures, but quite a few others were too dark to be used :-(

I then spent WEEKS AND WEEKS going through Google to try to find the solution. Among the various suggestions that I tried, were (a) downgrade to the original driver on the cdrom (b) search the Windows registry for a 'contrast' or 'brightness' setting that I could manually change (c) try 3 different host PCs (d) re-calibrate many many times etc. etc.

Interestingly, I also found that this unit seems to be exactly the same (rebadged) as the Vupoint FS-C1-VP. So I even tried their driver (from their website), which works OK but no better/worse than the Veho one.

On a complete whim I unplugged my Veho VFS-001 from my PC's front USB 2.0 plug... and instead plugged it into a cheap (£10) 4 port USB 2.0 hub (also in my same PC), which also had 2 other devices plugged in.

=> Hey presto! It now works OK! Sure, I have to wait a few seconds (approx 5) to wait for the image contrast to appear correctly (otherwise the whites are too white, or the blacks are too black) but it generally works OK for my needs! Hurray!

[I can only guess that the power from my PC's front USB port was either too powerful or not enough power... and somehow this caused the problem???)

It's still not perfect - as one user says, you will find that this 'raw' image is a bit contrasty. I also agree with another user, if you do not click the 'take picture' button at the correct time, then the resulting picture will be too white or too black (he says "if there is a part of the image which contains completely white pixels, then there is no contrast left. I tried to get around this problem by clicking the capture button before the scanner had auto-adjusted the contrast, which was fiddly but partially effective...").

Overall, I now agree with this other user: "If you have slides with very pale faces or lots of white you may have a lot or burned out slides, but otherwise I was happy with the general quality, colours and definition."

It has been a bit painful to get it working OK for me, but now that it does I'm quite happy.

If you are a 'newbie' then you might prefer to go for a different device (or gamble that your PC's USB 2.0 port likes the device!). If you are experienced, and don't mind a gamble, then it's quite a nice solution for a very cheap price.
=> I'm happy, best of luck to everyone else!