Bill,
   Being a four thirds user (not micro 4/3, but "close"  ), I would offer a suggestion that you might get a lot of insight about micro 4/3 over on the DPReview forum dedicated to that format:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1041
  Hope that helps,
   -Mike

Thanks for the quick reply.

Too bad!  It feels like something that should have been included in LR from the beginning.  I guess the best thing for me is to learn where I shouldn't ckick. 

   -Mike

John,

   You mentioned that you are looking for ideas for additional plugins.  I just came across a "problem" in which I must have inadvertently changed the rating of an image down from 3-stars to 1-star.  It must have been an extra mouse click in the wrong place that I didn't notice.  It made me realize that Lightroom should have some sort of "write-protect" feature that allows me to lock an image in the database once I've finished with it, so I can't inadvertently change it.  Sort of protecting me from myself.  Would something like that be possible to implement in a plug-in?

Just an off the wall thought, maybe.

Thanks,
   -Mike

I didn't see anyone else responding to your question, and I'm certainly NOT and expert on the subject of sharpening.  But I found this book to be very helpful to me as I tried to improve my skills in this area.  It gives detailed sharpening workflows for both Lightroom (V2.x) and Photoshop.

Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
~ Bruce Fraser  & Jeff Schewe

Hope this is helpful,
   -Mike

Marc has pointed me in the right direction, and now I am able to successfully tag images with no problems.  Here is the link to the info for anyone who runs across this problem.  See the second section on this page:
http://imageingester.com/technotes.php

Note that this refers to Vista and IIP v 2.3 Beta.  It is also true for Win7 and the latest IIP version 3.6.  One other note, in case anyone stumbles on it like I did.  If you have more than one instance of the IIP Shortcut, any/all shortcuts that you use for GPS Tagging must be set to run as administrator - obvious in hindsight, I guess. 

Bill, I must respectfully disagree with your assessment that IIP is buggy in this area.  I think the explanation of the fix may have been lacking, but the program works as advertized for me now.

Thanks,
   -Mike

There was an issue reported last June regarding the inability to tag images with GPS coordinates resulting in this error:
       "ERROR: Failed to execute external command."
       http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=4138.0

I am still getting this error in every image that I try to tag, and I'm wondering if there ever was a resolution to it.  If so, I haven't been able to find a reference to it anywhere.

Just for completeness, the last time I asked about it I seemed to be getting other strange symptoms, but I tracked them to my creeky old hardware.  So I stopped worrying about it.  I have now replaced that system with a new Core I7-based Windows 7 64-bit system.  I'm running the latest version of IIPro - 3.3.06

I'm now seriously backed up with images to ingest, so any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks,
   -Mike

I'm in the process of building a new computer to replace my elderly (>6 year-old WinXP) system.  This seems like the right place to ask questions about the pitfalls of such a move.  The database is in the form of a single Lightroom catalog of Raw files (not DNG).  The images were ingested using IIp into a naming scheme and file structure that I'm happy with, and want to replicate on the new Win7 system.

1:  The plan was to temporarily move the old hard drive into the new system and move the entire database to its new location on new drives.  Then have a new instance of Lightroom import the files at their new location.  Does that make sense?  Is there a beter way?

2:  But since I've been using only Raw files up to this point,  I'm also considering converting to DNG at the same time.  Maybe, using IIp, I could re-ingest (and re-verify) everything from the old drive to the new one converting to DNG in the process.  Are there any pitfalls to this? 

3:  What do I need to do to insure everything in the "old" Lightroom catalog comes along into a new instance of Lightroom?

It's going to be a real joy to have a Core I7 with 8 GB of RAM and 1.6 TB of hard drive space instead of my ancient Pentium with .5 GB Ram and 320 GB of drive space.   

Thanks for any suggestions you can offer.
   -Mike

Dan,
   I have read the book - both versions - and I understand and completely agree with the point you made.  I don't thnik the use of a bucket approach should have anything to do with whether one uses color labels in liew of transfering working files among a series of working folders.  I was just mentioning that I personally haven't found an urgent need to take that next step into archive buckets.  My database of a few thousand images is still too fluid to consider any of my images to be "archivable".

Thanks,
   -Mike

Dale,

I'm coming late to this discussion.  I'll start by saying that I'm an amateur, with relatively low volume, so these comments may or may not apply in your situation.  I ingest (using II Pro) directly into my final file structure.  Then when I import into Lightroom, I have it set the purple color label on all files.  I don't use that color for anything else, and it gives me a visual indication of which images have not been worked on.  I'm a little bit casual about post processing, so if I go away and come back some time later, the color really helps.  As soon as I process an image I clear the color or set it to Red for rejects, etc.  My keepers end up with no color.

Where this scheme might break down would be if I were to go back to a "purple" image and make adjustments after I had already backed it up to an archive bucket.  However, I'm not doing that yet -   my database is still small enough that I just back up the entire thing periodically.

Hope this is helpful,
   - Mike Baynes

Joe,
   The short answer is no optical medium is truly archival, but DVD+R is better than DVD-R.  Here is a link that you may find helpful - or it may just be way more than you ever wanted to know about archival DVD.   
http://adterrasperaspera.com/blog/2006/10/30/how-to-choose-cddvd-archival-media

Jon,
   It's been a while since I looked at iMatch, but IIRC someone implemented an iMatch script that would do just what you're looking for.  I started out thinking that was the best naming convention to use, but when I started using IIP I just went with what was available there.  To some degree it becomes a moot point, because I don't tend to use the actual filename very often.  I agree with you that it seems like the most logical choice and I don't know why others don't agree with our briliant ideas. 
   -Mike Baynes

Peter,
   That seems to be the case.  I'm getting successful tagging without using thumnail views, and inconsistent tagging when trying thumnails first.  I've sent a PM to Marc with more details.  I could post that here later if that would help.  I still can't be certain that IIP is at fault, it could be something peculiar to my ancient hardware, but I'm stumped.

Thanks,
   -Mike

Peter,
    I believe the problem I've been seeing has nothing to do with the GPS device, but for the record, I use a handheld Garmin GPSMap60 Cx.  It outputs a .gpx file which II uses at ingestion time to find the coordinates for each photo.
   Also for the record, I don't believe this has anything to do with the specific model of camera.  The latest attempt that I've done seems to indicate that I can ingest in II and tag images correctly as long as I don't invoke II's  thumbnail view.

Thanks,
   -Mike

This is an old thread, but I haven't heard from Marc for a while on a resolution.  And I'm still having the issue with GPS tagging.  The files are ingested, but are missing their GPS data.

Marc, if you're out there, is there any progress?   

Thanks,
   -Mike

This is a question for those of you who are using netbooks in the field:

What are your impressions of their usability?  I realize that a netbook will not have all the horsepower to do everything, but the under-$500 price seems very appealing.  My primary use would be to ingest photos to the hard drive as one of two backups of my raw files in the field (the other being a direct copy onto a hyper-drive).  I would be tending to carry the netbook while traveling for email and web browsing, so I'd also like to be able to use Lightroom to view the raw files and possibly output an occasional jpeg for email.  Is that out of the question for an Atom-based netbook?  Are there any configuration options I should consider?

I guess that's more than one question.    Thanks for any insights you might have.

   -Mike