[alt-photo] scanner woes

[Dianna Rust]

Dear List

I wanted to scan some 8 x 10 negatives to enlarge for printing.   I currently own an Epson Expression 1680.   My old (vintage!) G4 was getting terribly slow, so, after 11 years, I went the whole hog and bought an iMac with Lion.   I had no idea there would be no driver to connect my scanner with Lion (apparently an Apple issue).   I can only get Apple's image capture (very limited), and cannot use any Silverfast software as I have done so in the past. 

Epson have advised me to look at Hamricks' VueScan.   Does anyone have any experience with this?

Also, I wonder if I should bite the bullet and buy (painful!) a new flatbed scanner that will work with Lion, and that, maybe, there's some decent software out there (such as Silverfast) that would be compatible too.   

I'm not very tech savy, and using a scanner is just one tool to me, but I was enjoying the ability to do so.

Any advice or comments would be very appreciated

Thanks
Dianna Rust