Never cared about scanners, but found this amazing little scanner http://www.fujitsu.com/us/services/computing/peripherals/scanners/scansnap/scansnap-s1500m.html (with some recommendations from friends) that does almost everything for you. Double sided color, fast, high resolution, OCR, automatic key words, etc. Another life changer like iPad and Mac.
Can drop almost anything into it in any shape, size, or mixed up fashion and it handles the job well. It will scan the files into many formats and has good OCR. It will automatically recognize highlighted words on a page and identify those words as key words making retrieval even easier.
I drop my receipts and important documents in daily and then trash them. The quality is so good that I’ve scanned hundreds of old pictures and then trashed the originals. I have fully transitioned my Mandarin language learning books, lessons, etc. onto the iPad by converting to digital with this scanner.