Scanning negatives/photos with Epson 1660

I want to know the best way to go about scanning negatives and photos
with an Epson Perfection 1660 Photo scanner, so that at a later date I
can:

1. Archive them to CDR or DVD-R
2. Print them onto photo paper
3. Make a Photo CD

Also I have a few programs to chose from to do the actual scanning,
see below, but which is best?

I like the Epson Smart Panel software because it has numerous options
for scanning and saving both photos and negatives, such as scan to
P.I.M. file, gif, tiff, bmp, 24bit and 48bit etc, but what format and
resolution should I chose to save the scanned images.

I also like the fact that Epson Smart Panel can preview up 6 frames of
a negative at a time and gives you the option to scan and save one or
more of them. Is there any other software that can do this that would
give better results?

I look forward to your advice.

Bearcat.

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My system consists of:

Hardware
***********
Windows XP Pro OS
AMD Athlon 2200 CPU
160GB hard drive space
1GB DDR memory
Epson Perfection 1660 Photo scanner
CDR/W writer
DVD-R/W writer
Epson Stylus Photo 895 printer

Software
**********
Epson Smart Panel
Adobe Photoshop 7
Adobe Photo Album
VueScan
Silverfast
ArcSoft Photo Impression 4
Paintshop Pro 8