Erin, As another low-ender running the same programs on a 7500 and a 7300 (the same applies to your 8500) I would suggest: 1) Run at least 256MB RAM -- just bought two 128MB sticks from Velocity Upgrades last month for $70 including the shipping. 2) Add a larger hard drive. In addition to RAM, PS needs a lot of empty hard drive space. Again look around for deals. I purchased a 4 gig HD with an Apple ROMed 8X CD-ROM for $45 + ship both are now in the 7300. (The 7300 it was bare bones when purchased.) The 7500 runs a 9.1 gig and a 4.2 gig. 3) If you can afford a G-3 processor upgrade do it. It greatly increased the speed of the 7500. If you can't afford a G-3 find a used 604e 200 MHz card; unless of course you're 8500 has the 604e 180 MHz processor. My 7300 runs a 604e 200 MHz card I found for $20 + ship. Both machines are very stable with PS, PM and tons of fonts open. BTW both system have had no problems working with much larger full color files as well. As far an Internet performance -- all my machines are dog slow even with a 56K modem. (Not just AOL, my other ISP as well.) I believe it is comes with a dial-up connections. Go for DSL or other high speed connection if available and you can afford it. I can afford it but it is not available here. Don't know about burning CD's. However, I plan to get a CD-RW next month and do no not anticipate any problems. Good luck --glen In a message dated 9/8/01 11:34:16 AM, Erin Randel <[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: <<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). >> -- PCI-PowerMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | -- Sonnet & PowerLogix Upgrades - start at $169 | & CDRWs on Sale! | Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> PCI-PowerMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/pci-powermacs.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/pci-powermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Macintosh? Get free email and more at Applelinks! <http://www.applelinks.com>
