filmscanners: Dust in Sprintscan 4000?

[Barbara & Martin Greene <martbarb@earthlink.net>]

I've been told that the Polaroid Sprintscan 4000 does not exaggerate dust
and crud to the same extent that the Nikon LS 4000 does.  I've examined
Photo CD scans and found that, while there is much less, nevertheless a good
deal of spots show up.  Perhaps, dust is a problem in every scanner.  I'd
appreciate if users of the Sprintscan would tell me just how much stuff
shows up in their slide scans.  With a reasonably clean slide, just how much
work has to be done using the rubber stamp in Photoshop to get a really
clean 13 x 19 print?  Also, if you use a dust removal software program, such
as Polacolor, Silverfast, or vuescan, how helpful is that?  If such a
program is used, to what extent does it soften the image and can that be
restored using unsharp mask.

Martin