RE: Scanning Plans for reference and tranfer to CAD
Jkinosh,
Your best bet would probably be to go ahead and go with Kinko's. Unless you know somone that works at an architectural or engineering office. There are some specialty printing shops that can do it, but I think that they'd be hard pressed to beat 10 bucks a pop. One thing that I would suggest, before you get them to scan your print, make sure that there is some sort of reference scale on there so you can make sure that it is accurate once scanned in. Some of these places (especially Kinko's) don't really maintain their equipment to the highest standards, so they can sometimes get a little off on the scale.
As far as doing it on the flatbed scanner, again, go to Kinko's. It's worth the 10 bucks to not have to take the time to get the small image back to the original image size.
One other thing, once you get them scanned in, send me a copy of the files. I love to convert to AutoCAD. I'm getting a pretty good library of plans right now.