Your best bet is to buy a digital camera. That way you don't have to scan anything - you just plug your camera into the computer and upload the pictures. Just be sure your 6 year old computer has at least 1 USB port - most digital cameras, printers, etc use this type of hookup nowdays. Most digital cameras come with easy-to-use software, so it shouldn't be difficult at all for the general user.

We have very good luck with either a scanner (on an "all-in-one" printer, about $150 to $200 HP printer) or a camera (a bit more expensive). Our computer is about 4 years old. It runs Windows XP. This is our second printer, and it seems they have a "life" of about 2 years? I guess we're cheapo's when it comes to printers, however, it's hard to find one these days without "bells and whistles" like memory card readers and such. To install the printer, all you do is hook it up, put in its CD, and groan and moan through about a half hour of installation. Then to scan a photo in, you just click on the printer's software icon, and call up its scanner stuff, and run for it. It asks where to crop the picture, and where to store the result. Same for the camera. One of ours hooks by cable to the computer. Another can go either by removing its memory card and inserting into a slot into one of our computers or, on the other computer that has no memory slot, inserting into a Dazzle device, hooked into a USB cord attached to the computer. Then, you just treat the attachment as an external disk and either copy or move the pictures from the camera onto the location (folder) you want to store the photos on your computer. I hope my answer is clear!