I recently bought a scanner, although it's not new... because scanner manufacturers are completely ignoring non-Microsoft users. Newer hardware isn't supported in Linux because the scanner chips (provided by separate companies) are different and no one thought to provide drivers for other operating systems. Older hardware is supported but is no longer being sold, so instead of the original manufacturer making a profit from sales to new customers, people selling used hardware gain instead.
Even the older hardware isn't supported by the manufacturer itself, instead third-party developers contributing drivers to the SANE project provide the only way of using these devices. (Which is probably a good thing as actual manufacturer drivers are likely to be closed source).
Unfortunately newer models of scanner hardware doesn't actually provide anything new. Scanning a 300 DPI image at 4800 DPI only makes the resulting image data larger (and most likely makes it less usable as minute details of the paper/film grain will become visible). With no reason to buy such hardware and develop drivers for it, these will go unsupported until the used hardware is no longer available.
So I now have a Canon CanoScan LiDE 60. I'd link to it but there's no longer a page for it on Canon's website. As far as I can tell this is currently the only bus-powered high-speed USB scanner supported under Linux (except perhaps the LiDE 50). The (latest) drivers for it aren't available for 64-bit versions of Windows (just like my TV receiver cards... there is a pattern developing here).
Line art scans of documents can be compressed very well, which is useful for the mountain of old bits of paper that I should throw away...
