Getting Equipped For Scanning

[Harold Gough]

Back in 2001 I though I was sorted for digital image storage, when the day came. I had a PC with a "huge" 20GB HDD!

Now I have had a rebuild:

I now have a dedicated image PC. It has 500GB HDD, 1GB DDR RAM DIMM. DVD RAM burner*; Photoshop 7 and Elements 2 installed (am scrounging around for an update ROM).

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM (Of some discusion potential?)

I also have a back-up PC with just Window 98 installed. Having retreived all e-mails, favorites and documents, and reformated the HDs from two drives with corrupted operating systems and installed Windows 98 on both, I can't go back again.

On Thursday I am having broadband installed.

My scanner (Epson V750 Pro) still lurks in my loft but may be installed before very long.

Harold

[DaveW]

All you need is a digital camera now Harold to go with it!

Windows 98? Aren't we up to Windows 7 now in 2010?

DaveW

[AndrewC]

If you start scanning have a look at Vuescan. Great scanner software and free to try.

http://www.hamrick.com/

Andrew

[ChrisR]

1GB DDR RAM

..sounds a bit low? It's cheap these days
My box was happier after going from 1GB to 3GB particularly running Zerene Stacker, and particularly running Photoshop plus anything much.

[Harold Gough]

Thanks. Andrew.

I was aware of Vuescan and that is one of the reasons I have been retrieving old files and links from my compromised hard drives.

Harold

[Harold Gough]

All you need is a digital camera now Harold to go with it!

My wife has one for forseeable uses.

Windows 98? Aren't we up to Windows 7 now in 2010?

I had the disc, also those ME. One PC is to be given away (so I needed to check mouse and keyboard function) and the other is a back-up for files and e-mails. What purpose would W7 serve? Ditto Office.

Harold

[Harold Gough]

I have now had broadband for 48 hours. No more playing "can you tell what it is yet" as the forum images very slowly downloaded. Nether do I have to kick my son off the internet so my PC could access it. (I'm going to miss that).

Harold

[ChrisR]

Now you'll need Terabytes of storage for all the rubbish you can download, and your computer will be too slow.
And you'll realise how orribly slow some web sites are!

There's progress for you.
But I do remember when it took an ebay page 15 seconds to refresh...

[typestar]

My scanner (Epson V750 Pro) still lurks in my loft but may be installed before very long.

Harold

Harold,
as far it is MY own experience: as far as colour "production" - better "reproduction" is concerned: the official provides EPSON Scan software does a really good job - the colours come out very good.
I own Silverfast also, as far as the colours and the simplicity is concerned,
I mostly use Epson Scan for the quick jobs.
As I also got to know VueScan, Linocolor, Silverfast, oXYgen (this is the CREO /Kodak own software, exepensive enough) I must say that the "natural" Epson Scan provides nice results...

just my two cents:
christian

[Harold Gough]

And you'll realise how orribly slow some web sites are!

There's progress for you.
But I do remember when it took an ebay page 15 seconds to refresh...

Yes. My first two visits to websites were Amazon and eBay, both awful previously. I can now spend money much faster!

Next was FM Forum (Macro) where I never got to see the multiple image postings, now not a problem

Harold

[DQE]

I have now had broadband for 48 hours. No more playing "can you tell what it is yet" as the forum images very slowly downloaded. Nether do I have to kick my son off the internet so my PC could access it. (I'm going to miss that).

Harold

You might enjoy having an internet switch to divide up your bandwidth among the competing users. Using this device, each PC gets its own port and nobody can monopolize the available bandwidth. Of course, you'll need a separate PC or other networked gadget for each user!

Here's one that is similar to the switch I use in my home. I think it's about 20-25 US dollars. They make faster switches with even more ports, if needed.

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/MEA/en/pr ... =LearnMore

I hope this info is helpful.

[Harold Gough]

I have now had broadband for 48 hours. No more playing "can you tell what it is yet" as the forum images very slowly downloaded. Nether do I have to kick my son off the internet so my PC could access it. (I'm going to miss that).

Harold

You might enjoy having an internet switch to divide up your bandwidth among the competing users. Using this device, each PC gets its own port and nobody can monopolize the available bandwidth. Of course, you'll need a separate PC or other networked gadget for each user!

Here's one that is similar to the switch I use in my home. I think it's about 20-25 US dollars. They make faster switches with even more ports, if needed.

http://www.linksysbycisco.com/MEA/en/pr ... =LearnMore

I hope this info is helpful.

The only time we had only one, shared, functional PC was the last 6 months, while one was compromised. Now we are back to two again, this time on wireless network. So far, with us both downloading huge (utilities) software downloads, there is no conflict. The only tricky bit was when forwarding emails from one PC Outlook Express account to the other, both being online at the same time, impossible on dial-up. I had to close one to make sure the messages went to the other.

I rarely download much once a PC has all the protection and repair software it needs, so there is little conflict.

Harold

[DaveW]

The main problem I found in the UK is the copper wire phone line Harold since your Broadband speed is nothing like what your ISP supposedly provides if you are far from the telephone exchange, the phone line being the bottleneck.
Have a try with an online speed tester and see:-

http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

ISP's so called broadband speeds are a bit of a con-trick since the small print says "up to XX MB" not XX MB minimum. Still faster than dial-up though, and often now in the UK broadband is cheaper than dial-up. I rejigged both my phone line rental and ISP and now get both for almost what I was paying for dial-up alone previously.

DaveW

[Harold Gough]

The main problem I found in the UK is the copper wire phone line Harold since your Broadband speed is nothing like what your ISP supposedly provides if you are far from the telephone exchange, the phone line being the bottleneck.
Have a try with an online speed tester and see:-

http://www.mybroadbandspeed.co.uk/

ISP's so called broadband speeds are a bit of a con-trick since the small print says "up to XX MB" not XX MB minimum. Still faster than dial-up though, and often now in the UK broadband is cheaper than dial-up. I rejigged both my phone line rental and ISP and now get both for almost what I was paying for dial-up alone previously.

Dave,

We couldn't get that one to work but another showed we were getting 8MB of the 10MB on the day it was installed. It is down to just over 6MB on Sunday morning. It was a lot less until we (?) bypassed my ethernet card by removing the cable and getting both on wireless via USB.

We were warned that the speed would drop in the evenings. Sunday must be worse, with all the sport-bidding on eBay!

Anyway, it does more than I need at the moment.

Harold

[DaveW]

My 8Mb broadband link shows a download speed of 1852 kbps and upload speed of 331 kbps at the moment using that checker.

I gather the distance from the exchange is the limiting factor in my case which is about a mile, though obviously there will be more online Sunday?

DaveW