Hi Jim, I don't recall that the 1240 was mentioned as one of the slow Epsons. I think the 1250 was, or 1650, something with 50. How long does it take for you to scan a page? You're talking scanning here, right? Not recognition, which takes additional time, and which speed depends on your machine's available memory, hard drive speed, processor etc. I believe the 1240 would not benefit from usb 2.0, because it came out before usb 2.0, but I might be wrong. I'm using an older scsi scanner, an hp4p. and I find that its speed is quite acceptable. Mary