Tabloid/A3/Full Legal ... Plustek Opticpro A3U?

I'm in the market for an a3/full legal/tabloid (11"x17" ) scanner. But sadly, this would be for hobby purposes (I can't figure out any reasonable way to get the damn thing to pay for itself), and therefore, I'm looking for a large format scanner on the cheap.

From looking around, it seems to me that the choices are Mustek (~$200, really poor quality image), Plustek (OpticPro A3U ~$400), MicroTek (9800XL ~$1K), and Epson (GT series and Expression XL series $1K+).

MicroTek and Epson both make decent quality scanners, but they also kinda cost a bunch.

The Plustek scanners I have never seen. They're 400x800 optical resolution, which is fine by me, because I'm ok with scanning at a true 400dpi. I'm more concerned about the image quality, moreso because I'm going to be scanning 4 color printed on newsrag. If you happen to have one of these and wouldn't mind my pestering you about it, please let me know here or in a privmsg.

Oh, and idle curiosity... as someone else mentioned in this forum about the Epson 1250 (and it happens on my Epson ES-1200C too). It seems that some of the Epson letter sized page scanners distort scans by squeezing the resulting image in at the edges. Do their large format scanners have this same "feature"?

Thanks in advance for any help rendered...