Limiting Nikon Scan 4 Processor Usage under OS X

This is kind of nuts, but it works if you have a fast machine and plenty of memory.

I've been annoyed that Nikon Scan 4 is hogging my G5's CPU taking 60-70% even when in the background (and even when it is simply driving the scanner and not actually processing anything). My guess is that the software was a crappy quick and dirty Carbon port... It has the same clunky feel of many early carbon ports like Internet Explorer or Remote Access 1.0. Anyway it sucks (and it tends to crash if the scanner runs into a jam... )

These 2 solutions work surprisingly well:

1. Install the windows version of Nikon Scan under Virtual PC 7, then set the amount of background cpu VPC 7 uses to something small. Scan away. This is surpringly effective. You can save all the files to a shared folder that resides on your OS X drive to avoid the hassle of having to drag files back and forth. This cuts down background CPU usage to 20-30% and allows to to batch process slides in the background without photoshop stutters.

2. Run the OS 9 version of Nikon Scan under Classic. This has the advantage of running native and not having the VPC overhead. You can use a freeware utility to control the amount of processor juice classic is allowed to gobble up.

Both the Windows and OS 9 versions of the software are decent so you also get software that doesn't crash to boot.