[wayrad]

The first thing Finereader does is convert the page images to .tiff anyway, so what file format you do the initial save to is a matter of personal preference. I use .jpg myself, others like different formats. PDF works too - Finereader will accept it and perform OCR just fine. Using PDF isn't "wrong", it's just that you''ll have to OCR it before going further, same as with any other format you use to save page images.It has nothing to do with your choice of a final format for the book (whether PDF will work for that depends largely on your choice of reading device).

Any scanner will work, and all have advantages and disadvantages. Sheetfeed scanners are fast and you don't have to worry about page curvature messing up your image and making recognition difficult. (However, Finereader can process the image and correct for this sort of distortion, to a degree.) Flatbed scanners are slower (although the Opticbook will do 5-6 pages per minute), will have some distortion due to page curvature, and may require pressure on the spine, espcially if "gutters" are narrow, but you don't have to cut up the book. Digital cameras are reported to work well, often in conjunction with some kind of home-built frame to hold the camera and the book. Most or all of the rigs you will encounter will belong to one of those three types.

Speed is nice, but not as important as you may think - the amount of time saved by a fast scanner is only a tiny fraction of what it takes to make an ebook. More important is that the machine scan at at least 300 dpi - that is often enough, but 900 dpi capability may sometimes be handy. You don't need to spend huge amounts of money to get this capability (actually, anything you buy these days will have much better resolution than that). If you buy a new scanner, make sure it comes bundled with a highly rated OCR program. That may be enough for your OCR needs and, if you do outgrow it, will qualify you for upgrade pricing on Finereader Professional Edition.

P.S. I am partial to the Opticbook 3600 because it's optimized for nondestructive book scanning, and provides what (for me anyway) is a good balance of speed, quality, and price, even though it's not the best in any one of those categories. It does have disadvantages - non-book scanning performance is suboptimal, and customer service and tech support are reported to be disappointing, to put it mildly.