So far I've used an Epson 3170 flatbed scanner, for prints, negatives and slides. It's absolutely excellent for prints and negs - the results from slides are OK but a Nikon Coolscan V film scanner would be better. Unfortunately Coolscans start at over £500, most have just been discontinued and secondhand ones are fetching the new price on Ebay so I'll pass for now. Secondhand Epsons are by contrast reasonably cheap.

As BillD said, you can improve old prints unbelievably by digitising them, then using Photoshop, Picasa etc. to correct them. I have some century old group shots which have responded beautifully to gentle Picasa-ing, which for those who don't know is a FREE download from Google.

Technology moves on, so it's vital to copy your digital files to the latest media and back your files up. The ideal current situation is where you have the files on disk, on a second hard disk, on DVD, and a backup on some form of remote storage eg another server via the Internet. However I must admit that I haven't got there yet!

It is NOT a good idea to throw the old stuff in the trash after you've digitised it. To physically preserve my old stuff (in the UK), I'm using Arrowfile loose leaf folders for prints/negs, and Jessops 600 slide boxes for my old slides - both of these options allow indexing of some sort. Oh yeah - write the details on the back of the photo or the slide mount, which is more than most of my relatives did.

Now all I need is unlimited time, a comfier computer chair, and a Lottery grant for the new house in which to live while I store all the shots in the old one......