I have a PowerBook G4. I got it 2 years ago and recently I have been having some issues. I plan on making a visit to my friendly neighborhood Apple store this afternoon. However, I have pretty much always had a problem with the speed of PSCS2 and Bridge. Anyone have any suggestions for how to speed things up? I have a TON of photos (RAW and Jpeg) saved on my hard drive. Would eliminating those photos help? How and where do you store your old shoots? I am terrified to delete anything!

I have all my old shoots backed up to DVD. Some people use external hard drives, and put them away. Yes, you need to unload some of your hard drive. Photoshop and Bridge need room to work, and if your computer is too full, it doesn't have that room.

How much RAM do you have?

I would clean off your hard drive, and upgrade your RAM and you would be amazed at how much faster things will be.

I have 979MB of RAM. How much should my Photoshop be using? About how much does it cost to get more RAM?

well first of all, RAM isn't your only problem. you need a LOT of hard drive space to run photoshop... i suggest using an external drive as your scratch disk. also, depending on what the machine will take, you should max out the RAM.

http://transintl.com is the place to get RAM - excellent prices and lifetime warranty on all memory.

I went to visit the Genius Bar at the Apple store today and the ran some diagnostics and I had a minor problem with my hard drive. I am also going to get another gig of RAM and invest in "Time Capsule" if you haven't seen what Time Capsule can do check it out!

Time Capsule

Remember not to buy ram from apple!! Sooooo expensive!

Is $100 for 1 gig too much? Were would I get it cheaper?

send me the specs on your system and i'll tell you which RAM to get - they're specific abut which model and generation computer you're buying the RAM for. $100 sounds about right though.