they seem to last, but the film, if it has some curl, it can curl.
I use the epson software to scan, yes, mostly. Except colour negative film, where the silverfast se can have its advantage with the auto film base detection and colour restoration it can do.
But has no batch scan option.
I plan to get vuescan one day...i tried the tryout version,seems to be nice but has no colour correction and some other features are missing, features i'd like to see how they work.
Epson software's main problem is rthat it's faulty with the colour management, it cannot properly handle if you scan in any colour space other than the monitor's. For BW it's not a problem; for colour work though, i have to attach the colour profile manually (i scan in adobe rgb or in epson v700's own profile).