Wow, there is a first - I took my own advice!

Well, not quite like that. Reading through this thread made me realise that I had acquired a new PC just before I switched to SDHC cards (still have one 2Gb SD card with the packaging not opened). My trusty card reader was bought a lot earlier, and it only wanted one quick check to confirm that it will not read SDHC cards.

We have a shop called "Just a Pound" (a bit like Poundland, but smaller) and by way of killing time I wandered in today. What did I find but a baby SDHC reader (looks like a USB memory stick) and for - of course - just £1. Works a treat, so I now have backup for the built-in reader, plus an easy way of getting images onto my G5 iMac.

This one is branded as Gadget Tech, but it looks screen-printed on so I guess that it could come wearing any number of names
Geoff

For what it's worth ...
I started with a very old version of PS that came as part of a package for an ancient Mac. All I did was to adjust the lighting and crop. I have slowly learned to do more, and acquired more modern packages - usually by keeping an eye on the bargains.
My philosophy is that a package that was good yesterday will still be good today.
Right now, you could stay where you are.
You could spend £33 on Elements 8 (Morgan Computer)
You could spend £58 on Elements 10 (Amazon) and maybe cheaper elsewhere
You could get PSPro X3 for £15 (Morgan again)

Any of these would be a big jump forward. There are books available to help you master the new software. Many are available from your public library.

What you would notice, most probably, is that the modern packages are much faster - if that matters.

On past experience, I would go for a slightly out-of-date package, that was a big advance on what I was used to.

And, if you really want to see if a "more modern" package is right for you, try Studioline. You often get the old version as a covermount on one of the computer mags, but they have made the V3 into Freeware, and "suck it and see" does not come any cheaper than that.

Until you have tried, you will not know just what you can do. Certainly, I would not have had half as much fun entering competitions at my local club without some good software to help me.

Geoff

I don't think it matters too much which package you use to learn the princples of image editing.
I have PS6, and I can think of several ways in which it works just like Elements 7 or 10. But - using PSP X4 (which I bought to replace X) I can resize an image in pixels. I cannot see how to do this in Elements 10, but I can do it in PS6. Any of them will allow me to crop to pixel dimensions, but that is not what I want to do.
I did not like certain features of Elements 7 - but I do use Elements 4 on a Mac.
OK, if you are a pro or semi-pro and have a learned set of keystrokes and shortcut presets, then you might find one or other is better for you. Me, i spend more time looking at the screen image, than I do doing the actual editing. Even so, I do find the older versions of PS to be slow, while PSE 7 or PSE 10 or PSP X4 to be way faster than I can decide what to tweak next.
Geoff

Given the low cost of USB card readers, I am surprised to read of anyone who does not have one.
As steven9761 points out above, anything you do with camera connected to computer via a cable needs a fully charged battery.
To do otherwise is to risk losing data. If that data is an image that you will never be able to get again, then you are into a whole world of hassle trying to recover the image - but a card reader can make this a lot easier.

Geoff (who has several batteries for his K20, and checks the charge regularly - but always uses a card reader)

What a wonderful set.
No 6 is particularly great!
Geoff

There is a word for the "advice" you were given by the guy in the shop - and it is a rude word.
OK, so I don't run PS or Lightroom, but I do run Win 7 64-bit Pro on a machine that only has 4Gb of ram and a dual-core processor - and it is not overclocked. Software? PS Elements 10 and PSPro X4 are my main tools, and if this combination could carry out an operation a couple of milliseconds faster I would never notice. I spend more time thinking about what I am going to do with an image than I take to do it.
If you have an "old version of PS", that is what is slowing you down - on my setup, PS6 absolutely crawls compared to Elements 10. I have my K20 set to produce RAW + jpg, and the RAW is DNG. I can look at the .jpg, see what I have got, and then open the RAW to do anything that I need to do with it.
PM me if you want to, but please don't spend good money on kit that only has the benefit of a salesman's recommendation.

Geoff

And just in case the suggestion from steven9761 does not work ...

1. I think the Coolscan V has a USB 2 connection. Plug it in, and see if the PC will recognise it as a USB equipment. Now open Photoshop (or the graphics package of your choice) and see if the scanner comes up as an option when you try to [Import] an image. This can get round a lot of compatibility problems.

2. As an alternative, follow this thread:
http://www.nikonians.org/forums/dcboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=198&topic_id=222...
(yes, I know it's a long one), and see if that helps.
Geoff

Recently, my local club (Trowbridge Camera Club - shameless plug) ran an evening of studio portrait experience.
Backdrops,main and slave flashes, modelling lights, models, were all laid on - all we had to bring were bodies and lenses. Despite having two 50mm primes in the bag, I ended up using a lens that no-one has yet mentioned.
So, lets hear it for the Pentax-F 35-70 [loud cheers].
But seriously it is a really useful portrait lens. The zoom is just enough for precise framing, but not too long to lead to optical compromise.
Oh, I nearly forgot, cheaper than any good prime from the film days.
Geoff

Like bento2 asks - do you mean that the Biotar will not focus at infinity, or that the infinity marking on the lens does not come to the "12 o'clock" position? These are two different problems. A third problem is that the focus ring will turn so that the Infinity mark has gone beyond the index mark.

I had an M42 lens that would not mount with the index mark at 12 o'clock on any (yes, any) M42 body - let alone an adapter. I have an M42 lens that visibly wobbles when used with an adapter - in this case the lens has pulled tight on the adapter before it has contacted the lens-mount flange. You need to define your terms very precisely, to determine if this is a lens or a mount problem.
Geoff

On my old Canon i560, under Win 7:
Start>Control Panel> Devices>Printers>Canon Inkjet>Preferences ...
and under the Main tab set color/intensity to Manual, and then click on Set ...
Now it is possible to lighten/darken the whole print.
Worked for me when a new monitor caused a "problem" in that what I saw on the screen was not what came out of the printer.
Geoff