If you have a computer that shipped with Win98, there is a good chance that it simply won't work that well with WinXP. These days you can find basic computers starting at around $400, and get pretty decent ones in the $600-$800 range. That includes a pretty fast processor, lots of RAM, and a big hard drive. Of course to get a killer machine will cost $1000-$3000, but even the $400 machine is light years ahead of what was shipping 5 years ago for many thousand. You can save money by not getting the very latest CPU. A year old CPU is very cost effective but still very fast. A Gig of RAM solves a lot of problems in modern software. Less will work, but RAM is probably the number one fix for problems. You probably can't buy a computer these days with less than a 20GB hard drive, and that's fine unless you gather every bit of free stuff from every site you ever go to. Too many people worry about getting the latest, fastest game graphics card, and end up killing their system. An older decent graphics card is typically more stable. It often takes graphics companies a year or more to get all the bugs out of their drivers. Some people get overclocked CPUs and think it's great because a game runs faster. But it can kill complex software since complex programs can cause an overclocked CPU to overheat and crash the software. Programs like Photoshop seem complex to end users, but they are quite simple programs compared to a 3D editor. A P5 scene with a few characters is more complex (software-wise) than a 10,000 pixel square image with 50 layers in Photoshop. BTW, I have an old 1Ghz PIII, 1 GB RAM on Win2k and run Photoshop CS, Lightwave 7, UVMapper, Netscape 7, and P5 at the same time for hours on end with no crashes. If I ran Word, Outlook, IE, or any IM type stuff at the same time it would crash constantly.