PSE to PSCS4

[littlekiwi]

I have a couple of questions

Will I be able to run CS4 on this laptop

Toshiba Satelite A200
Processer - Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core Processor T2390
Operating System - Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Memory - 1GB (hoping to upgrade to 2GB early next year)
Graphics - Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator X3100 (GL960) (128MB dynamic system video memory and up to 251MB shared video with 1GB system memory)

Secondly I will be a student next year and can get CS4 for less than $300 NZ, should I upgrade or stick with PSE 6 since I have only used it for about a year. I'm kind of thinking since this could be my only time I can get this good deal for several years I should go for it but am not 100% sure

[Abby]

I can't help with your other specs, but do know 1GB of RAM is really not very much .. PSCS4 (like 2 and 3) takes a bunch of memory - it will possibly work, but it's going to be really slow and frustrating.

[littlekiwi]

As I said I am hoping to get another 1GB of RAM early next year once I have some more $$

[Kathleen]

These are the minimum requirements posted on Adobe's web site:

Windows



1.8GHz or faster processor
Microsoft® Windows® XP with Service Pack 2 (Service Pack 3 recommended) or Windows Vista® Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise with Service Pack 1 (certified for 32-bit Windows XP and 32-bit and 64-bit Windows Vista)
512MB of RAM (1GB recommended)
1GB of available hard-disk space for installation; additional free space required during installation (cannot install on flash-based storage devices)
1,024x768 display (1,280x800 recommended) with 16-bit video card
Some GPU-accelerated features require graphics support for Shader Model 3.0 and OpenGL 2.0
DVD-ROM drive
QuickTime 7.2 software required for multimedia features
Broadband Internet connection required for online services*


It looks like you meet the minimum requirements, but the 1GB of memory makes me nervous. You can always download the trial and give it a run on the laptop to see how it does.

As for being worth the upgrade, you are an experienced scrapper, so what is it that you can't do in Elements that you want to be able to do that Photoshop would allow? If you are happy and content with what you are able to do in Elements, I would stay stick with it. If you are always wanting to use actions, use paths, run scripts, or use other tools that Photoshop may have, then it may be worth the upgrade.

[idtwinmom]

Kathleen just hit the nail on the head! I just upgraded to CS4! The learning curve is a little steep, but the things Kathleen listed are the exact reasons I chose to make the move! And the one thing I thought I would lose and would still be using PSE for (the ability to easily merge photos for the panaramics) has now been added to CS4!

[shazzt]

Sounds like a great opportunity Jennifer! I use CS3 on my desktop which has 1 gb RAM and is over five years old. Sometimes it is a little slow but I haven't noticed much of a change from PSE. My two and a half year old laptop (also 1gb ram) also seems to cope. The extra ram would certainly help you. If you can afford it, it might be worth it. However, you may want to check the upgrade options from an educational version.

[littlekiwi]

I'm thinking it is going to be a good graduation present come June next year

[idtwinmom]

The Upgrade price from PSE to PSCS4 was only good until 11/30. The education price is good as long as you are in school! That makes the education discount way cheaper than upgrade pricing! Of course, if you decide to wait that upgrade price is usually offered a couple times per year.

[LauraLou]

I just did the upgrade from CS2 to CS4. The upgrade installed on my laptop smoothly, but when I tried to install it on my desktop I got that horrible blue screen with the message about a "fatal error". All it was was McAffee blocking with the firewall, but it took me 2 days to find that out.

Now to tackle that learning curve!

[allsmilz61772]

vista alone is going to have trouble running on 1gb ...2 is going to be slow even. Thats part of the reason Vista is getting such a bad rap, the venders, especially Dell and HP are putting it on computers that cant run it. Much as I like CS4, I would say spend the bucks on upgrading first

[Lauren]

I successfully ran CS4 on a 2 year old dell with 2 gig of ram during the beta testing phase - I couldnt of course use any of the Open GL features because I didnt have a graphics card only an accelerator like you have Jennifer but the program itself ran ok .
I did get memory errors occasionally and it was important not to have any memory hogging programmes open at the same time ( like firefox- mail etc ) - but it did run ok
I did have a faster processor though so you might find that it is slower to function .
I also didnt have Vista on it - only XP which I think was less Ram hungry itself

My new laptop has 4 g of ram ( which of course 32 bit windows only uses just over 3) - and a much faster processor - I can have more programmes open and I can use the Open GL features because I have a graphics card now - - but frankly the actual programme isnt much faster - this is due to Vista and the way it allocates memory and is very greedy !!