One of the great OS 9 utilities for those of us with large screens was TaskMenuBar. It was simple it put small 16x16 icons of all running apps up in the menu bar. This allowed one click application switching without taking up any screen real estate. I have yet to find a solution for app swtiching under OS X that offers me the same one-click, no screen realestate, visual feedback convenience. OS X shareware guys? Anybody? Come on this can't be that difficult. My $20 is in the mail the minute it works.



Under X I use Launch Bar as a launcher/switcher. Sometimes for certain projects I'll use drag thing and create a process dock to mimic taskmenubar but it's on the workspace and invariably gets in the way.

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.

review: Nikon Coolscan 5000/ w/ SF-210 Slide Feeder

Well not really a review of the Nikon, Coolscan 5000, but some more observations.

1. I had to trade in my original slide feeder (it eventually stopped being recognized). The second feeder is more reliable.

2. I've now figured out how to tweak the settings to get the best possible scans. Don't believe the scan time posted on the literature. With all the settings on so that an average slide is processed for dust and scratches, it takes 2-3 minutes/ per scan. So doing a batch of 50 is s l o w.

3. Vuescan software (http://www.hamrick.com/) plays much nicer with your machine (no crashes, it's multi-threaded so it can walk and chew gum at the same time, and it's not such a horrible processor hog), but the files it produces are slightly less nice. If you are scanning for the web, no problem, but if you are scanning for print, the Nikon software makes better images. At least that's my initial conclusion. With some tweaking of the vuescan software things might get better. Scanning times are just as slow, but image processing is a bit faster. If I get motivated, I might do some side/side comparisons with clocked speed tests.

4. The scanner does a shockingly good job with overexposed slides. With some tweaking in photoshop you can really make good images out of slides that you might have otherwise thought were wast. Underexposed slides are more of a problem.

5. If your slides aren't terribly dusty you can try importing them without dust reduction and then batch fix the images later in photoshop using the free Polaroid dust and scratch remover. Free download from their website.