As per the title really, what's the best (read: cheapest/quickest/simplest) way?

My bestmate's given me an awesome get out clause for years of shortchanging her on her birthdays by asking I do her copies of the 1000's of photos we took together at uni.

Film scanner? I think they are £40 or so tops

Will they be any good? And does the age of the negative affect the quality? I'm not after massive (ie. 300, 600dpi) scans but it's still a concern.

Depends on what sort of quality you're after.
A £40 scanner will give you something, but as for a good scanner I'd recommend the Epson V700. It's on my shopping list, certainly.

You can get adaptors that fit on the front end of lenses that hold negs, you then take a photograph of the neg, et viola, a digital, archival copy.
I can't imagine they'd be that much, though a £40 scanner may be cheaper.

Mark

For a price scale factor of 10 I'd expect it to!

Hmmm. The thing is if I buy a negative scanner I still may be short of doing the lot and will first have to go through my negs. to see I've got one for every photo (I doubt it) - and that'll take a fair amount of time in itself.

I may just have a play with my flatmate's flatbed on the weekend to see how long doing 3No. 6x4 prints-to-an-A4 @150dpi will take (realistically)... of course there'll then be the p'chop exercise after that.... hmmm.

The Epson is good. We got one for the Bat Cave.

A word of warning, though. Don't expect it to be quick. A full plate of 35mm transparencies can take a fair few hours for the machine to scan and the software to clean up. The results are well worth waiting for, mind.