Canon’s Canoscan 8800F is a traditional flatbed scanner, as opposed to the combined printer-scanners that are more popular nowadays.

The reason you might want to go for a separate unit rather than the more convenient combination is that this kind of scanner promises much better quality of images.

The 8800F can also be used to scan negatives and slides - it has a built-in adapter for this, so there’s no need to buy anything else. The inside of the scanner’s lid unclips neatly to reveal the lamp it uses when scanning negatives and slides, and the supplied negative holder can then be placed on the bed of the scanner.

Up to 12 negatives in two strips are held in the guide, and unlike with a standalone film scanner, the supplied software automatically detects the frames and scans them as separate images. Scanning times are not especially startling - it took around 12 minutes to scan 12 frames at the default high quality settings, but this is less than with a film scanner, and there’s no need to manually feed the strip of negatives through after each frame.

The software is quite user-friendly, and can be used through your normal paint program as well as the supplied programs. The package includes a copy of the latest Adobe Photoshop Elements (for both Mac and PC), which complements the scanner well.

Scan quality was very impressive, with better colour reproduction than we’re used to from standard film scanners. Likewise for standard scans (from a paper image, for instance), quality was impressive, with good speeds at slightly lower quality settings.

The scanner is big - much larger both in terms of space required on the desk and in terms of bulk, than Canon’s cheaper (and lower quality) Lide range of scanners. But that’s worth putting up with in exchange for the marked increase i n quality that the Canoscan 8800F provides. The addition of the excellent Photoshop Elements software rounds off the package nicely.

Vista compatible: Yes

Drobo is an external hard disk with a difference. Whereas most such devices come with just one disk inside, this one has room for four hard disks, although it doesn’t actually come with any installed, so that’s an extra cost to bear in mind.

It’s designed to offer backup as well as just storage, so that you can copy files to it and not have to worry about data security.

Since its launch in the USA it’s been very popular with photographers there who like the ability to quickly archive images. It’s suitable for home users too, although the price is on the high side.

The Drobo is easy to set up - we just plugged it into the PC and it recognised the device as a disk. You have to put at least one disk in, of course, but that’s easily done. The front of the case slides off easily and disks can then be slid into place.

There are several lights that indicate the health of the disks and whether they’re being used. If a disk fails, its light goes red, and you can simply swap a new one in. The Drobo will then copy everything over to the new disk so it all remains backed-up properly.

We got pretty good data transfer speeds, even faster than a standard USB hard disk, and the device was unfazed even when we unplugged one of the disks as it was being used (that’s not to be recommended, though). It’s an expensive backup device, but if your data is worth keeping, this is an excellent way to keep it.