Thanks. My experience with having computer equipment repaired has been similar, so I was reluctant to take this scanner in for repair; the repair guy calling himself "picky" when I asked him if he could get it cleaner than it was tipped the balance in favor of letting him do it rather than continuing the exchange process till I got lucky and got a clean one to begin with. The Epson customer relations person confirmed that cleaning a 2400dpi scanner was hard to do well outside of a clean room. I think if (when) the 2450 does need cleaning, I'll try to set up a temporary "clean room" environment with a couple of HEPA air filters in a small room in the house. Thanks, everyone, for your helpful suggestions on this issue and (in one case) your LOL response on Epson's dirt-for-free policy. - David -----Original Message----- From: owner-scan@leben.com [mailto:owner-scan@leben.com]On Behalf Of Arthur Entlich Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 3:38 AM To: scan@leben.com Subject: Re: Dust and plasticiser haze [snip] The few times I have had my stuff fixed locally, it has come back looking a lot worse for wear, and usually NOT repaired or with different problems, so I pretty much stopped using them. I sent my Nikon camera in for a repair estimate, and when I got it back (I refused the estimate) and opened the back, I knew exactly what color carpet their test bench had on it... there were fibers and tufts of the carpet in the shutter, in the baffling, in the film winder... just disgusting. I am so glad I didn't let them open the camera up. Then again, Nikon didn't do a great job on the repair either, my autofocus lenses all misfocus now, and that wasn't why it was sent in to begin with! I've come to the conclusion that some things just shouldn't be repaired. As much as possible, I almost always fight for a factory boxed exchange when I get something that is not functioning within warranty. Repair shops just don't seem to be able to replicate the precision the factory robots and machines and jigs can, even assuming they are competent service people (another if)... Also, the darn manufacturers often do not design their product for being easily repaired. I have no simple answers. Sorry, Art - Turn off HTML mail features. Keep quoted material short. Use accurate subject lines. http://www.leben.com/lists for list instructions.