I recently had to scan in my passport while staying at my girlfriend’s house in the US and I was impressed how easy it was in Ubuntu 10.04. I plugged in her HP PSC 1200 printer/scanner/copier and opened Applications->Graphics->Simple Scan. I pressed the scan button, cropped the image, and saved the scan.
Scanning in Ubuntu was a lot easier than in Windows XP, where you have to install drivers and software first. I’m really impressed by the usability of scanning in Ubuntu.