bfginger: Nearly all devices able to scan 35mm film do a poor to very poor job at it. People just don't care about quality. High quality film scanners are out of production due to lack of demand except for the eye wateringly expensive units like the $20,000 unit Zeon has lucky access to ;)
Unless you're willing to spend thousands of dollars or Zeon is happy to scan 1,000 slides for you ;), the Epson V700 is probably going to be your best option.
https://flickr.com/groups/466058@N21/
The only obvious alternative is the Plustek OpticFilm 7600i Ai
https://flickr.com/groups/plustek_opticfilm_7600i_ai/
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/scanners/plustek-pdf.shtml
or to snap photos of the slide with a dSLR and an attachment.
I have heard good things about the plustek, and was thinking about getting one myself. After you have used it, you can also sell it.
The thing about sending them off to be done 'professionally' is that you don't know how good the quality will be, and they will probably not do any photo editing, unless you pay a lot more.
