Other than the astronomical price, the big problem with the Imacon is that it has no auto-feed, making it pretty much useless for scanning a large collection of film.
Still though, I'd love to find one, for those slides that are worth the effort.
As DSLRs start to approach the resolution of a dedicated scanner, I wonder if the macro-lens approach will take over from scanners? Nikon used to make film and slide holders for their bellows macro lenses. Before purchasing the Nikon 5000 scanner, I considered going that route. It still involves a bit more personal time than a slide scanner with auto-feed, and you need a solution for reversing the negative mask on negative film, but as Mark Segal has pointed out, film scanners are becoming a scarce commodity. I'm curious whether it would be better for extracting shadow detail from Kodachrome - possibly by taking the HDR approach with multiple exposures of the slide?