I have the slightly older version of the same scanner (the N650U). I like it a lot for its size and the USB/no power supply so it makes it easy to carry. I didn't like the software that was bundled so I dumped it immediately. I then installed two different ones; Photoshop 6 and Photodraw.

Photoshop is a heavy-duty graphics package that does WAY too much stuff for what I need. I didn't understand most of what it wanted. Photodraw on the other hand is a package that was bundled with Microsoft Office. They have since discontinued the program. It is a much simplier drawing program and has all the features that I need. If you're an artist and want to do other fancy stuff, forget it, but for this type of stuff its great. They brought out a version 2 and then dumped the package. Don't know why.

As for settings, I use two different ones. For my web site, I use 100dpi and the file sizes for a JPG file are around 7-9K. Pretty reasonable for a website. Downside is that it does not zoom very well. You lose a lot of definition real fast when you got to 200% +. But the chips are scanned at actual size.

When I started working with Checkmate, I realized that using a 100dpi picture was not enough resolution. I upped it to 150dpi and was able to zoom the picture with excellent results. Yes it makes the database file much larger, but you have to take the good with the bad.

To illustrate this, I set up a small web page (yes, I have way too much time on my hands) with a chip scanned at three DPI settings and then set a zoom on each. Check it out to see the size vs. resolution.

http://members.home.net/rpoppel