1GHz is not that slow.  Start by loading your current computer to the gills
with memory.  Get 2 Gigabytes if your system will take it.  A 7200 rpm drive
will also speed things up noticeably, but that's a bit more of a bother to
install.  By now, memory prices will be very low for your system.  At that
point, you can decide whether you need to upgrade.

Have a vacuum cleaner handy when you open up the case.  There are many
reputable places for purchasing memory on the web.  www.satech.com is where
I usually get mine - they are fast and friendly and cheap.

A 1GHz 'home' PC should be fine, provided you have enough memory. With
Microsoft Windows XP I found 1GB restrictive, with 2GB my images open
quickly, How much memory do you have, and what operating system?

I presume the computer is one of the new 64bit machines (Core 2 duo?) so I
suspect the problem may be amount of RAM available.  20 seconds for a two mp
file seems very long (2MP jpegs should open almost instantaneously).  There
are a number of articles written on optimising photoshop (virtual memory
available to photoshop, etc) and you may be able to find them via google - I
read one to set up my machine in a book on photoshop.  I have recently read
that the watermark software is a killer with loading time so disabling it
speeds things up (go to the photoshop program files and rename the watermark
directory so photoshop can't find it I think)..

best of luck
Malcolm

+    OK - most of these replies are suggesting adding memory...
something I hadnt even considered with the newer unit... sounds
great, and thanks to all for the advice.

Just a wild thought - you ARE copying the image to the computers hard
drive before trying to open it, aren't you?

What you describe sounds more like an I/O bottleneck than insufficient
processing power.

Or it could be a lousy program, or a poorly configured good one.
Everyone is assuming Photoshop, but you didn't state that...

More RAM is always a good thing (especially for Photoshop).

While a 1ghz machine is quite slow by today's standards, I suspect it is
rather more likely that you don't have enough ram for what you are
trying to do, rather than the processor speed.  You didn't mention the
amount of ram.  If you have less than 512meg, then you might consider
increasing it.

So you are running W2k. Now how much ram do you have? how have you set up
Virtual memory? What program are you using to edit and how have you set it
up, specifically in regard to memory usage and undo's (space and memory
allocation)?

yeah, that definitely doesn't sound right. A 1 GHz processor should
have no problem with  2mp image. Can you give some more details?

what exactly is the processor?
amount of memory/ram?
hard disk size and available space?
operating system?
which program are you opening files with?

Hi

I am rather surprised that no-one has suggested your computer can not really
be described as fast, when it's processor is only 1000Mhz.  3 Years /
Computers ago I was using one with a 1200mhz Processor.

Having said that, a 2Mp camera producing a 6Mb file is a rather small image,
and should open almost instantly.

Machines are available almost every where with Processors at 3000Mhz to
3500Mhz and with fast Hdds.
For large image files the more RAM, and the faster the RAM the better.

Lots of people work with files around 60Mb, and quite a few use much larger
files, and they use readily available "Off the Shelf" machines, but may well
add RAM to bring the total up to 3 or 4 GB.

Any Computer Store will have a range of modern Fast machines available.

Roy G

Assuming you're talking about opening files from a hard drive, and you
don't mean waiting for PS to open... just using a program like IRFanView
or ACDSee, your files should open instantly.  You should be able to zip
through a hundred JPEG's of that size as fast as you can glimpse them on
the screen.

It's not a matter of too little memory if it's taking 10-20 seconds.
That's a couple of hundred times too long.  I'd suspect something wrong
at the OS level.  I'd check for viruses & malware, and if that didn't
work, I'd reload the OS.

I've been a computer scientist and mathematician for over 30 years. I
spent 30 years working for DOD doing scientific software support and
development.

I think there are a several factors to be considered in this case. One is
the operating system. If you use MS and it has been installed for over six
months, then your computer will not run as well as it did. Defragmenting
the hard disk would help. Reinstalling the OS would probably help more.
Installing Linux instead of MS would help even more. If you don't have
sufficient system RAM then there will be a definite problem. How much is
adequate depends very much on what your OS is and what you have running.
More may help. Your disk drive may not be very fast. It is a fact that
your computer is not overly fast. If it's a 1ghz VIA C3, that is not very
fast at all. If it's a 1ghz Intel, that's not going to run as fast as an
AMD processor running at 1ghz.

Basically, you not given us enough detailed information about your system
to diagnose the problem. My hypothesis is that you might very well have a
system with 1ghz VIA C3 and about 128mb RAM. In that case, updating to
about a 2.4ghz AMD or Intel CPU with 512MB or more would probably make a
huge difference.