I've never had a good experience with a slide scanner, other than the Nikon CoolScan series ones. Unfortunately, those are the $Texas ones that you are wanting to avoid. If you just want to preserve the shots and don't really care all that much about them, or plan on blowing them up to poster size, I'm sure a $200-$500 one will do you just fine. Just know that it's going to take a minimum of 1 minute per slide, just to scan. I'd pick up a bottle of compressed air to blow them off as well. Dust is a slide's worst nightmare.