Brad, here at work, about six months or so ago, we got two Epson Perfection 4490 scanners. They were around $149 each, I believe.
I couldn't be happier with them. The images look great, it's very quiet and sleek (a bit tall and "hump" but a rather small footprint) and it's, hands down, the fastest scanner I've ever used in 12-plus years of using scanners.
I've considered getting one for home, if/when the time came that I needed to.
You can launch it on its own, or from within Photoshop. Nice, simple interface with lots of control and front-end tweakery (if you need that).
Here's a screenshot I just now took of the interface and working area.
I don't know if that helps or not. But you can see that it's fairly straightforward, but that there is plenty of tweakability and advanced features available too, via pull-down menus, etc.