Archiving scanned Neg's & Slides

[offtheroad]

I don't know if this is the correct place to post this? I'm about to embark into scanning all my personal neg's and slides. Not being able to afford a dedicated neg scanner I think I'll settle on the Epson 700 flatbed. I'm fully aware that a dedicated neg scanner is the best but don't have the cash for a Nikon Cool scann. In any case, I need some help on 3 major questions.
1. What's the best format to save in since these are for my two daughters one using a pc the other a Mac. Do I save in TIFF or jpeg. I mean what will be around 15 years from now.
2. What size 8x10 at 300dpi or like my daughters suggested that they doubt they will ever want an image of that hi rez and they suggest 3x5 at 300dpi?
3. Save to many CD's or DVD's or a seperate external HD for each?
Oh one last question, Is there an app that would let them browse thru each CD sorta like a slide show something stable that will be compatable years from now. I really doubt that question can be answered.
Thank You
jbechdel@comcast.net

[prouss]

I'm in a similar position but have just about decided to "outsource" the job and send hundreds of my negs to scancafe.com. I factored in the cost of the scanner, the value of my time (including my wife's happiness that I'm not spending hours scanning), the extra quality I'm likely to get from their high-quality scanners vs anything I can afford, the cost of storage (if I chose to save in TIFF format) etc. I'm curious what opinions people might have on this subject before I take the plunge and, specifically, whether scancafe is a reliable, quality processor. Thanks.