Best value & easiest photo books and scanning photo prints?

[principalitygirl]

I've a backlog of digital photos of my son and want to make photo books of the best of them.
I'm thinking I'll do a small - medium size book per month or quarter.
My laptop is pretty clunky but I have a tablet too. Most of my photos are saved on an external hard drive in various subject folders.

Can someone recommend a photo book retailer whose software is easy to use and isn't going to slow up my laptop? Or should I use the tablet, assuming I can connect the hard drive to that? Photo books that are quite basic but nice and not too pricey ideally.

Oh and is it easy to get the photos to display by date to make the photo books easier to do without messing up their original files?

I have about 50 photos that I
only have prints of and not digital files. what's the best way to turn them into digital files? I don't have a scanner unfortunately. Do the photo departments of supermarkets do that service?

Sorry for lots of questions! Am obviously not v techy!

Thanks!

[principalitygirl]

bump! anyone?!