Jeremy, the Cannon 8800F is great, was pretty cheap ($179) I think and I have zero complaints. It's important to use a black background on your scans and to make sure no light gets through.
Matt, I don't use Picassa and looking at your enhanced Cobb I'm happy about that decision. I think it's pretty clear that whatever you did to your card is not done to mine. I do sharpen my scans sometimes (because when the card is blown up it can sometimes lose some sharpness) but not too much as it would make the scan appear grainy. As for any color enhancement, I don't do the actual scanning (my secretary has that lucky job) but considering how lazy he is I doubt much is done at all to the scans other than some sort of automatic slight enhancement. Here are some additional scans that can give you an idea as to what my scanner can do, in color and one in black and white:
As you can see in the red flips in my T227 Cobb and Goudey Gehringer, the color red does not pop out the way it does in Matt's altered Cobb scan.