What I will say is that where manual focus Pentax lenses are concerned the f3.5 versions of the 28mm are superior to the f2.8 versions. You don't need a particularly fast lens for landscapes and the images are much sharper. Took this a few days ago with my recently acquired K 28mm f3.5 at f3.5 and infinity:

No need - there's one here

Does anyone know how to get the finishing ring off a Pentax-M 28mm f2.8 (the later version)? I have one with a bit of something nasty in which would be really easy to fix, if only I could get the finishing ring off without wrecking it in order to unscrew the front element group.

By finishing ring I mean the part around the front element which has "SMC Pentax-M..." on. On the earlier lenses this is metal and unscrews if you use a rubber band or something to get some traction on it, but it doesn't seem to want to unscrew on this one.

In my experience the fungus isn't generally between two cemented together elements - it usually seems to form either on the inside of the front or rear elements or on the front element of the rear element group (presumably as damp can get to here quite easily due to the gaps for the aperture lever). That's true of 50mm primes and a 28-50mm zoom I've dealt with anyway, I've never had a 100mm macro so I'm not sure if it's built in the same way.

Cuttlefish are far too cute and fascinating to eat!

You could do a lot worse than one of the Film2SD ones you linked to above. I like mine because it doesn't need any drivers at all - I just pop the SD card out of the scanner, plug it into any computer (Linux, Windows, Mac, it just needs an SD card adapter and the ability to read JPGs) and upload the images or copy them to an external drive as a backup.

As long as Ilford HP5, developing chemicals, and SD card readers exist, I'll be able to keep using my old film bodies.

Or just download the GIMP at no cost. I doubt the learning curve is much steeper if you have no previous experience of photo editing (I didn't, and Photoshop doesn't run on Linux so it was useless for my netbook).

I use one of the independents in my town. We don't have chain opticians within about 50 miles of here, and the local one is a real perfectionist when it comes to prescriptions.

What impresses me about Saab is how they managed to wring the best out of being part of GM. Their idea of a corporate parts bin seems to have included reworking the 9-3 floorpan so that only they could build it (it'd be more accurate to say that the Vectra is a 9-3 without the clever bits) and they only used other parts that were suited to their needs. The 150bhp TiD is a real animal if you give it a chance, and feels a lot more nimble than something that heavy has any right to be.

I just wish they'd done something mad like taking the supercharged V8 from the Holden Monaro and putting it in the 9-3 Aero X. Big V8, 4wd, hello BMW it's your worst nightmare!

Yes, it would. You will need to set your camera to allow the use of the aperture ring, but that's very simple and will allow you to use other older glass.

Just bear in mind that this particular 28mm is 100% manual. You won't often need to focus it (for most subjects I set it to infinity at f8, this works well with car-sized objects as by the time you're far enough away to get it all in the frame it's in focus at infinity) and the focus confirmation beep/hexagon in the viewfinder will still work. You will need to use stop-down metering, but that isn't complicated.

IMO it's a lot sharper than the 28mm f2.8 which Pentax carried forward into their A series of lenses (which have the contacts to allow you to use all the exposure modes on a DSLR) and it's also a fair bit cheaper.

Here is one of the lenses in question - I think that one is overpriced, I paid about £50 for mine which was much more sensible.