When I lived in Germany I was involved in the rebuilding of a friend's 200 year old fisherman's cottage. One of my hats on the job was as photo-documentarian. I've got 1500 negatives to scan. This project has been on the back burner for, oh, nearly 20 years, now. Perhaps technology has finally gotten to the point of removing the tedium and automating much of the effort in digitizing negatives and slides. My friends have been waiting patiently on me for a long, long time!

At first, years ago, I was planning to go through all the negatives and order prints, then the digital era arrived and I made some poor attempts at scanning them with an HP scanner. In either case the work was daunting and satisfactory results were hard won.
Things have moved along in the modern world and today I ran across this Fry's ad for a no-name slide and negative scanner. That piqued my curiosity about the whole thing again and so I cruised Amazon looking for public opinion. I found this CanoScan 8800F for a little more money and this this scanner, which is similar to the one from Fry's, but has some reviews (there is a Pandigital scanner available from Fry's as well, but no reviews). I looked over at NewEgg.com and found only a couple reviews of similar negative scanners.

I'd really like to be able to get through this project in an intense weekend. It seems to me that the 'camera' style scanners are much quicker than the true scanners.

Anyone have experience with any of these types of scanners?
Your recommendations are greatly appreciated.