Scanner and software recommendation

I recently inherited all of my grandfather's work on our family's genealogy. There are about 5 boxes of notebooks from my grandpa's research and I really would like to digitize everything. I'd like to get it done as quickly as possible.

Can anyone recommend a scanner that fast and is compatible with Ubuntu that's under $50(USD) that I can buy online?

Also, can anyone recommend scanner software that is fast and compatible with Ubuntu? I know I have Simple Scan, but if anyone knows any application that is better, please let me know :)

Most epson and HP scanners seem to work well using sane, which is standard in Linux and ubuntu.

For the best and most configurable software, I would suggest xsane. It gives as many and possibly even more options than my old windows package did, though I admit that was about 7 or 8 years ago.

There may be some proprietary packages that will do the same or even better but I know of none personally, so suggest you look at xsane first than look elsewhere if it does not do what you want.

For a list of supported scanners take a look at the SANE website:

http://www.sane-project.org/sane-supported-devices.html