Hi Historian, The Perfection V39 is a photo scanner. It is not designed for speed as much as photo quality. You can reduce the resolution on your scans to minimize the processing time. This will result in more speed. If you do not need a flatbed and can use a sheet-fed document scanner, you can achieve up to a second per scan. For more information about document scanners visit the Epson support site. Regards, Mark - The Epson Team.