[APML] First Epson 4870 scan

Hello Everyone, For those of you in the North East I hope your keeping warm!

I received my new Epson 4870 scanner Friday and I would like to solicit information from those on the list using this scanner. I would like to know what software you are using, Epson software, VueScan or something else? And what settings you normally use for your 35mm positive and especially negative films. I have had less success scanning my negative film strips then my positive slides.
This image was originally taken back in 2001, I wanted to see if I could improve on processing and use it as a guide on how well I could scan it as compared to the original scan (Nikon Coolscan 8000).

This is a link to my first attempt at scanning a positive slide film using the Epson software.
www.starfillednights.com/image_data/Epson4870_image_data.htm

The image was scanned at 48bit color, Scanning Quality: Best, Resolution: 3200dpi, all the adjustments were disabled. I did adjust the R,G,B black points in the histogram manually in the scanner software before scanning the image. I resized the image in PS and converted it to jpeg. No other processing was performed. With a large enough mag I can see some color noise in the black background but with SGBNR (using the default settings), noise reduction software it is easily removed. But at this image scale I didn't think it was necessary to apply it.
In the above image I could see elongated white halos around the stars. I rescanned the image, this time I also reduced the white point in the R,G,B histogram to reduce the halos, it also made the background less brown. I also performed final adjustment in PS and cropped out some of the field rotation in the lower right corner. It seems to have made a difference. What do you think?
www.starfillednights.com/image_data/M27_image_data.htm

All comments are welcome.
Thanks, Joe Schaefer.