Newbee computer questions

I have an older Compaq notebook that is my primary computer I used for digital imaging. It is an Intel Celeron 2.6GHz processor with 512mb RAM that I can upgrade for $100.00 to 1024mb RAM. I have an new 80gig hd with latest XP and a 250gig external. I use Thumbs Plus 7 for general stuff, and DPP, and just got PSE5 and Lightroom 1.0. I have read some of the other threads about LR not running too fast, but I don't seem to have that problem--it is slower, but I am just starting to work with RAW. LR seems to be a bit slower than DPP--but I am really new at both so I can't really complain. Is it worth $100.00 for memory upgrade on this machine, or should I give it to my son and get something new?

If I get something new--what should I get? I don't want Apple or Mac. I don't want to spend a lot of cash right now--maybe $1,500.00 or so, less is better. I am not too sure about switching to Vista at this time.

I would not spend the money on the RAM. Once you buid up your LR database you will see that your machine isn't cut out for LR. 2GB is really the min amount of RAM I would use.

For that budget you could easily find something with excellent performance. Do you want to stick with a laptop or switch to a desktop?

Well, probably a desktop now with a nice flat screen display. I stopped into Office Max and they had 512mb memory on sale and I had a Max Perks card worth $25.00 so I couldn't pass it up. The memory was $45.00 each, so I got some paper and pens to make it a $100.00 and used the coupon. Computer works much better now.

So, for a desktop, what do you guys recommend for a hobbyist?

Since you don't particularly sound like a "build it yourself" type, I'd suggest going to Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. and seeing what's available. I just bought a nice rig for an office client at Best Buy w/out monitor for $979 that would do pretty much everything you need. Add on a 22" LCD and you'd still be under your budget.

Here's a link to the one I bought at Best Buy for them. Look at the specs on this one to see what you ought to be looking for. The 22" HP monitor is pretty nice, and it's only about $380 or so.

Looks like you already did it... but I would have suggested the RAM... its the cheapest quickest upgrade you can make, quite honestly... at worst, you sped up your computer a bit... and even if you get a desktop, you're likely to keep using your laptop also.

I'm running LR on a 2.12ghz AMD Athlon XP-M laptop w/ 1gb RAM... not a problem till I imported about 6,000 images... now its bogged down a bit; but not nearly the problems others seem to be having.

I'll be getting a desktop, also in the next year most likely... but I want to wait until the next-gen hard-drives and peripherals are out to take advantage of some of Vista's features.