Scanning insane

So, my Mom and Dad are cleaning out their house. They don't yet have an offer on their house, but in prep for the time when they do move, they are purging 40+ years worth of stuff. A great idea, I think. And it's got me thinking about doing the same here.
One of the things I did last year was to scan all the Christmas Cards I had kept over the years, and threw them in the recycling bin. Then, I put all those scanned images on a USB stick, and plugged the stick into the TV. (My digital frame also works for this). The result? A slide show of Christmas images playing on the TV, while we had company over during the holidays. It was great. And the best part, was that the people I had over, all thought it was a great idea.
So, when Mom said she found 4 boxes of Christmas cards in the house that she was going to throw out, I jumped at the chance to take them. I sorted through them, taking out only the landscaped images (they work the best). And I now have about 2 shoe boxes full to scan. OK.. maybe a little more than 2 shoe boxes full.
Anyways, today I installed the scanner on my laptop to get started. Turns out, the scanner is not compatible with Windows 8. Darn! A few internet searches and a bit of tweaking, and I got it to work. I have to manually crop everything after it scans, but at least it works. And I scanned 3 cards already. And all it took me was... 2 hours!!!?!?!?!?!
OK... that's 2 hours with installation and setup (which I don't have to do again). But, each card has to be scanned (why does this scanner go so slow!), then saved, then opened, and manually cropped, and resaved. With the number of cards I have to scan, I think I'm going to be here until Christmas! Ok, maybe not Christmas. Maybe NEXT Christmas!
Sheesh! What did I get myself into?