I finally got around to a computer upgrade. AMD Sempron x64, XP x64, 1 gig ram.
Now a RAW to TIFF or JPG conversion is <10 seconds. It was 5 min. on the 330MHz PIII system. That's a 30:1 improvement. Oh, and the best bargain on OS is this ... (good for developers) Sign up as a Microsoft developer. For $299 ($199 annual renewal) you get multiple licenses of XP/XPx64, and Server 2003 and a bunch of back office stuff. Visio, too. SQL. Most of everything. Really a good package deal.
