Seek recommendation of Memory size

[David Edwards]

Running Win98SE, 600mhz, 256MB ram. I've been learning on a trial copy v7
and just started to do watercolor on a real high res photo (59mb) for the
studio. I am fnding Painter v7 running particularly slowly on this big file
compared to the practice images. I was planning on buying a new PC instead
of upgrading my Win98 to WinXP since live body at Corel said v8 would not
run on Win98. Now I see in the threads that people are using Win98. I also
heard from a computer tech that Win98 doesn't handle large RAM very well.
With Photoshop this mem size just passes with 60MB files. I only have three
layers for short periods of time pushing file to 170mb sometimes. I noticed
that the same image in Painter's native format is a bit smaller than PSD.

Basic question is how much PC memory would I find very helpful doing oil and
watercolor coversions with 60mb original photo files? Any opinions whether
best route is new PC or upgrade current 4 year old box to WinXP and trying
to add memory. Would be nice to have a target memory amount in mind whether
I try upgrade or new PC. Also would a 2.8 ghz or higher be much different
from a 2 or 2.4ghz. Is it easy to see an operational differnce with Painter
or Photoshop between these faster machines - or is it more of a memory
issue? Thanks for any advice I can get before I start spending hard earned
money.
Dave Edwards

[Aetheros]

Upgrade an 4 yrs old box adding winx xp and a bunch of ram is not a good
idea, WinXp is a great resources eater and probably with an old machine
could be a waste of time and money.

Imho there are no appreciable difference from 2 ghz to 2.4, but if u have no
problem of budget buy a faster one with a LOT of ram. Ram makes difference,
and with a new pc, min entry level 'd be 512 mb. (NB:Windoze -any version-
always have a bad memory managment).

..:. Aetheros.
Privations.Net Staff

[David Goerndt]

"David Edwards" <dmed...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:3efc476f_2@cnews...

> Basic question is how much PC memory would I find very helpful doing oil
and
> watercolor coversions with 60mb original photo files? Any opinions
whether
> best route is new PC or upgrade current 4 year old box to WinXP and trying
> to add memory. Would be nice to have a target memory amount in mind
whether
> I try upgrade or new PC. Also would a 2.8 ghz or higher be much different
> from a 2 or 2.4ghz. Is it easy to see an operational differnce with
Painter
> or Photoshop between these faster machines - or is it more of a memory
> issue? Thanks for any advice I can get before I start spending hard
earned
> money.
> Dave Edwards
>
>
>

Dave,

You're going to find out that the watercolor brushes will work slowly no
matter what processor/ram combo you decide on. I have a 2MHz P4 with 1gig of
ram and Painter 7's watercolor brushes are very slow. You brush a stroke,
and wait for the stoke to finish, not conducive to spontaneity in painting.
The only way to get the brushes to react close to real time is to work on
small file size images which look good on the screen, but don't print wel at
all.

David Goerndt