Here's my specs:
Intel Core Duo 2.66GHz
4Gb Memory
What feels sluggish to me, more than anything else, is switching between programs and opening programs (even after a fresh reboot). Adobe programs and Outlook sometimes take minutes to open. Opening a file/project takes equally long. The program appears to crash but eventually opens the file, several minutes later. To remedy this I've installed 4Gb of reasonably speedy memory but unfortunately Win XP can't use all of it, as I'm sure you know.
About the sluggishness; once I'm working with a program I understand that a lot of it is related to my CPU. However I'm hoping that some problems will be resolved with a new graphics card. Issues like barely being able to move windows around inside Photoshop, flickering and even crashes when I use various masking tools etc. After Effects likes to crash as well when I scrub back and fourth in a timeline. That's also something which I attibute to my old graphics card which probably was faulty.
One major drawback is of course that I'm running Windows XP. I'm not allowed to upgrade to 64bit vista or win7 due to corporate IT restrictions.
Other than that I've got no hardware conflicts, have optimized scratch disk space, checked for bad sectors, searched for bad memory, updated to the latest drivers for everything, re-installed Windows twice, rebuilt my entire workstation with all new hardware, upgraded from CS3 to CS4... all in en effort to hunt down the cause of the sluggishness and other issues.
As a last resort I switched my GeForce 9500 card for an older card I had lying around. A bunch of problems (flicker among others) dissapeared. So I figure that shy of getting rid of all hardware again and starting over - a new graphics card may go some way in battling my problems.
Sorry about the ramble. :lol: