Before my parents passed...I created the digital equivalent of contact prints from the old family photos. While their short-term memory was shot, they could name the dog in the picture, the lady standing next to my grandmother (was a neighbor, so don't kill yourself trying to figure out where they stood in the family). I agree...where was the picture taken, when, who are these people...all vital info. I still have WWI pictures to scan...for those marked with "where", a quick glance at google sometimes brings me to the same house where the picture was taken in 1918!

Metadata tags are not compressed, but some programs do remove meta-data (e.g. F-stop, GPS data, copyright info). Sometimes this is desired for privacy reasons (e.g. removing GPS data) and other times, this becomes a problem. Almost all images have meta-data fields.

I keep them. Scanning equipment does get better, my retouching efforts get better....and returning to the "original" remains an option. With that said, priority goes to the original negative/positive (in the case of slides) over prints. I don't mind parting with prints if the negative/positive is in good condition.

If you make a commercial agreement (money is involved), then there are terms to the agreement -- such as compensation for your time (prep time before, actual lens time, post-shooting time, packaging of your pictures), expectation of defined quality (usually in the eye of the beholder), ownership of your end product (as a "work for hire", do they own the pictures or do you), terms with regard to reposting (e.g. social media). To the person who said, consult a lawyer....absolutely and you might want to review typical contracts to see if these are terms that you want to follow.

My thinking...either say "no" or do it for free, therefore limited/no commercial liability.

If you are comfortable with a screwdriver and can follow instructions, building your own is a great way to go. You can continuously upgrade over the years to keep your system running quickly and efficiently. What I've learned...some of the pre-built systems (e.g. Dell) use proprietary power supplies that need to replaced when they die by yet another proprietary power supply (eBay becomes your friend). Another limitation is the total amount of RAM memory the system can take....get the most number of slots possible as adding memory is often the least expensive way of keeping your system running fast....especially for handling large images and video. High end graphics card...only if your software supports it.

Laptops are handy...but for workhorses, not the greatest. They are also difficult to service (compared to a tower or desktop) and almost always require proprietary parts (eBay friendship!) that end up costing a significant amount of money (e.g. fans will die, disk storage will die or seem slow).

Using a virtual computer such as your entire Windows system running on AWS....since we work with pictures, only if your Internet access it very good and you need alot of compute power and have little time to wait.