All kinds of stuff - inquirious

[Aris]

I know I ask a lot of questions.

Why aren't there any slot 1 motherboards with the Intel 815 chipset, and why don't they have any intermediate speeds?

Along those lines which mobo reaches 133MHz FSB and does AGP at 1/2 speed? No VIA please.

I'm considering the Asus CUSL2 mobo - lacking ISA slots I must ask are PCI modems the resource hogs they were when they first came out? I recall when they were $25 and would bring systems to their knees.

I have a lot of old black and white pictures that need to me cleaned up. So:

Which scanner would do the best job/have the best grey scale. Many don't even list any information about this subject, but they list 42 bit color.

Along the same lines which printer would do the best job with black and white photos (yes color photos also count). I saw an Alps printer a while back and it was incredible. Do inkjets do a good job with black and white photos?

Good/useful software to process photos (all scanners come with software, but is it all that good? It seems to cheap to be any good.

How much memory will I need to process a 5 by 7 photograph (color) and a reasonably high resolution (I'm scared to ask what that would be).

[Jeff7]

About the PCI modems - I have used a few PCI modems; the only hardware modem (not a "winmodem" - those are the resource hogs) that I've ever found was a Phoebemicro one, based on a Cirrus Logic Chipset. The box identifies the modem as a Comet Deluxe. I am using it right now in fact - it gives quite good speed, with pretty much no impact on performace.

I myself do some photo edits like you're planning to do. I have a Plustek FBIV scanner - a model now about a year old; there's stuff out there better now, for a lower price than what I paid. The software I use is a combination of programs that came with another scanner, and a printer - I still haven't had need to buy any photo software. iPhoto Plus is the program I use for more editing.
Memory: 128MB is recommended; once I upgraded to 256MB total, manipulation of large image files went a lot faster, because the hard drive didn't need to be accessed as much.