I have a Canon LiDe20 scanner, which is quite inexpensive (I bought it for $40 on sale; the next model up (30) generally
runs about $50-$70, and I believe it's already up to model 80 or probably higher by now) and does all that I need
with no more fluff. It's slow, but for magazines I generally scan at 300dpi, which serves its purpose for making
wallpapers. If you want to use your scanner for photos and photo manips, you'll probably want a higher model since
you'll need to scan at 600dpi and possibly 48bits of color (the 20 has a max of 32bits of color). The platen is a
typical 9x12 and has an expandable "z-lid" if you're scanning thick books and is USB powered. If you look
at the scans in my gallery, most of them (anything resembling recent) labeled 'personal scan' were done on
this scanner, scanned at 300dpi and sized down to a more reasonable size (ie 3000pixels max width/height).