I use an Agfa Duoscan 1200 for both print and film scanning. It gives great results with my being able to adjust color and contrast at the touch of as button.
Bought it about 5 years ago for $500.00, I've seen them selling on Ebay at a start price of $1.99! If you can find one in your area, you might get a superb buy. Of course you'd need to get a scsi card to run this model if you don't already have one. (In fact there's a Snapscan 1212 starting at .50 up for grabs right now.)
I agree most decent scanners, including fairly inexpensive ones, can do a fine job scanning b&w prints, 8x10 or smaller.
I routinely scan 11x14 and larger prints. For these, I simply scan them piecewise and stitch them up in Photoshop CS2 by using Photomerge functionality. Extra step but it's an easy step nonetheless.
If you are sure that you will not need to scan slides or negatives, consider a scanner with an LED light source. Much faster startup, very cheap, very small.