RE: filmscanners: Which Buggy Software?

["Jawed Ashraf" <Jawed@cupidity.force9.co.uk>]

> NS 3.1 can be observed in Task Manager while it's running. While
> it doesn't
> impact both CPUs very much it does claim practically all
> available RAM and
> virtual memory (99%!). Before I start the application there is
> approximately 670 MB of free RAM and over nearly 1 GB free unfragmented
> swapfile available to it. During the scan only a few hundred KB remain
> free. NS eats all the rest. That's just lousy software engineering.

Lousy install/W2K more like.  I am running on Win98.  Nikon Scan 3.1 is
running (hasn't crashed since install a few weeks ago) standalone.  I have
Outlook running, plus assorted bits and bobs of system stuff and on my 512MB
PC I get typical stats roughly as follows:

During scanning I have:

520MB Allocated memory
220MB Unused physical memory
160MB Disk cache
36MB swapfile in use (out of a 512MB swapfile)

During post-processing (Nikon Scan really chomps the memory at this point):
750MB Allocated memory
13MB Unused physical memory
160MB Disk cache
36MB swapfile in use

With NS closed (after a long scanning session):

430MB Allocated memory
300MB Unused physical memory
160MB Disk cache
36MB swapfile in use

So in my cruddy W98 system with "terrible" memory management built-into the
OS, my PC comfortably allows me to write emails, browse the web and scan
with Nikon Scan all at the same time with bags of memory sat around doing
nothing.

I use NS in save-to-disk mode on single and batch scans if I run it
stand-alone.

Alternatively, if I run NS as a TWAIN source in PS, I can scan four images
in a batch into PS (PS is allocated 100% of my RAM, roughly 490MB) with no
swapping to hard disk.  Unless I turn on ROC and/or GEM (for which
stand-alone NS is the only way to go I reckon - unless I buy another 256MB
of RAM).

The nastiest thing NS does is use 100-200MB of extra RAM to process the 71MB
scan I'm doing (16-bit, 35mm frame in an LS40) when I turn on ROC/GEM.

W2K only does one thing properly: run SQL Server... (smile)

Jawed