Disable the network interface in Windows unless you're going to the web for
updates or drivers or somesuch. Store any scans to the local drive where Ubuntu
should be able to access them.

The answer is yes. It has been a while since I set up Win98, but you can
disable the network in Windows (all versions).

Control panel--Network and internet connections--Network connections
(LAN or high speed internet) left click disable

When i set up broadband on my old win98 machine a couple of years ago
the CD did all. On another machine having found XP so slow and so
clever looking for updates all the time - i just wanted to revert back
to win 98 for these two tasks. I have got win2k which might run ok.

I have an old mindmapping programme i use - eMindmaps which was
superseeded by mindmanager which was never as good.

As a matter of interest, what is the make/model of your scanner? There
are backends for many scanners that can be used in SANE.

It's a Xerox 2400 which i got with a 2nd hand PC. It didn't work
properly in XP. I tried it this afternoon on my old win98 machine and
it worked fine. Now thankfully it can be junked. I've got three old
PCs taking up space.

I know a Xerox 2400 isn't that modern but it is better than the HP
PSC500 which needs two printer cartridges to function and £60 per
year... and far too big.

According to
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupportComponentsScanners
www.sane-project.org/sane-backends.html

Xerox aren't supported by linux and yet i believe their printers are.
I imagine those links are the pages you had in mind. Or do you have
some SECRET knowledge!

you could install Win98 into Virtualbox on Ubuntu.
If you want USB support make sure you install the PUEL version.

The repositories to enter into your software sources is here.

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads

i thought about that but i'm unsure of Virtualbox. It is a
2.6 GHz machine and i think that would be a bit heavy on memory. For
testing apps and alternative environments i thought was what
Virtualbox was good for. With XP this machine is a bit slow and so
win2k or win98 dual booted would provide me with what i need - also
allowing me to remove the decent hard drive that XP is on and replace
it with a smaller one that i've got spare. It is just for this
eMindMaps that i still need to use and the scanner. I should get a
linux one but doesn't seem worth junking a virtually unused scanner
which is quite good. I tried a new Canonoscan one a couple of years
ago but it was only Autoscan and faulty so was returned. Thing is with
scanning if one can set the 'darkness/lightness' manually that is very
much better than Autoscan - which most now i think.

The processor power has really nothing to do Virtualbox working good or not.
If you just want to run Windows by itself your setup should be fine.
You can tell Virtualbox how much memory to allocate from the system to
the Virtual session.
If you want to use other programs while Vbox is running you will have to
experiment.
I have found on my system with Thunderbird, Firefox and Vbox open with a
Win2K session my system is stable and Windows actually runs faster then
if it was installed by itself on the computer.
This all with Ubuntu 8.04 and I won't tell you my system specs but I do
have 2GB of memory. Most times memory is all you need to install to help
your system run more stable and sometimes faster.

73's is used with amateur radio operators to mean "My compliments, or
Best Regards"
http://www.signalharbor.com/73.html

73s - so you're a 'radio ham' (think that used to be the phrase!)

Some extra memory is on the shopping list which i'm sure will make an
improvement. As a matter of interest how can win2k actually run faster
in Vbox - because it's in an artificial environment?

Yes I'm a "Ham" LOL.

Not sure how it runs faster just seems to run better and more responsive.

Thinking about "running faster and better" within another operating system
brought something to mind from the pre-Windows 95 days. IBM was vigorously
promoting their OS/2 Operating System as a superior alternative to Windows.
Unfortunately it had very little software written for it, but OS/2 had
better multitasking and far better memory management than Windows of the
day. The downside was that it required twice the RAM memory which was very
costly then. Windows 3.1 and all it's apps, ran not in an emulation mode but
natively and very well.

I never used it myself but apparently it was a valid claim. Windows 3.1 was
not renowned for it's stability, but when hosted by OS/2 it actually did run
better and crashed less. Once Win95 was out OS/2 quickly disappeared, as it
was awkward to use and had an ugly interface. For a short time (6 months?)
the best way to run Windows was under IBM and no doubt that was a spur to
the development of Win95!

Have you tried open source mindmapping programmes? There are several. The
repositories include: Freemind, Vym, Kdissert, and Sematik.

There are several others not in the repos such as:
http://www.xmind.net/
http://vue.tufts.edu/

Plus some Windows mindmapping software may work in Wine.

See also: http://www.linux.com/feature/118336

Sane documentation on Xerox can be found here:
http://www.sane-project.org/sane-mfgs.html#Z-XEROX