If it's all prints and you are just trying to collect them all in one place, seriously consider just taking a digital photograph of each one of them instead of scanning. It's tremendously faster, the images all start at the same size, you can selectively desaturate some old stains out that you couldn't do in a grayscale scan, you can take a photo of the back of the print to preserve comments and other info such as processing date, etc. I set them up for indirect light in a window and click away. I have a flatbed glass holder to flatten images, but I find that I don't even use that, just crop the curl away in processing.
I do have an epson 4870 photo scanner that I can use to scan prints and negatives, and I use that as a backup for things that I might want to do something special with. I find that it is slow to scan, change scanning area, straighten the print, get sidetracked in making corrections at the scan level, etc. But, I have found that most of us just want to get the images digitized and organized for show on the screen, web, or small prints.Taking a photo (in raw) has greatly simplified the process and provides plenty of resolution, especially in someone else's house while traveling.
I recently demo'd the process to my friend and his wife using the simplest of techniques. I used my little P&S Canon SD600 in the window, loaded it to my mac, and then showed them a comparison of the process using Aperture, Elements 6, and the free Picassa from Google. Embarassingly, the Picassa was as good or better than the others for all the basic stuff, lightyears faster, and she could duplicate the process after a 5 minute learning process. That makes using my good equipment and software look like a luxury treatment. The simple approach would be good for another "elderly" person like me to take on and have fun with.
On the road for several days now so can't follow the thread, but wanted to throw the idea out there. Bill