You're question is somewhat open ended. We only know you have an 8500
with a 1 GB hard drive. We don't know what processor speed, how much
memory you have now or what OS you're using.
I have been slowly upgrading 2 8500s at work for about 2 years. The 1
and 2 GB hard drives that came with that series are very slow and drag
down system preformance. I suggest you *replace* your drive with
something faster and much bigger. There are some 9 and 18 GB IBM drives
around that are now reasonably priced that I'd recommend. With the Adobe
products you use, you need at least 3 times the suggested memory
allocated. Put in as much memory as you can. I finally pulled out all
the 1 KB refresh memory that came in the machines. It wasn't playing
well with the 2 KB refresh DIMMs we'd added over the years. They are now
more stable than they've ever been. Don't forget to interleave your
DIMMs. Finally, upgrade to OS 9.1, by far the best release ever for the
PCI Macs (though 9.2.1 is better still if you have a G3 and later).
I'm not sure what 'improving your internet' experience means, but the
8500s have built-in internet, so you can certainly use cable or DSL.
And, they are more than capable of burning CDs.
Erin Randel wrote:
>
> I'm not new to macs, I'm new to trying to take control of my machine.
> I'm sick of getting kicked around by PC people, G4 gearheads, and my own
> ignorance.
>
> I do (mostly 2-color) design work for little tiny nonprofits. Read: I'm
> kinda poor and work on the small end of design file size. (I guess I'm a
> low-ender in the design universe, too.)
>
> I use pagemaker 6.5 and photoshop pretty intensely, sometimes
> Illustrator--for which I pretty much have to shut everything else down.
> My machine's been locking up a lot lately. I have room to add RAM to
> reach the 512MB max, space in the front panel for another drive . .
> .(current hard drive is 1 GB).
>
> Anyway, I just wanted to hear from other users of this model/series, like
> what's the MOST I can do to/with this? I'd like to stay low-end, and get
> my act together with knowing how work on my own machines, but not if this
> one's just not going to let me do the work I need to do to stay in
> business, you know? I suspect, judging from your devotion to the
> old-school* that this thing can do a lot more than I know it can/the
> salesguys are willing to disclose.
>
> On my wish list are burning CDs and improving my internet experience so
> downloading burnable material doesn't take so long.
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