Just had a Blue Screen crash on my Win 7 machine

[csziggy]

6. Hmmm - didn't think of that!

I haven't worked much with building my own computers or the BIOS since booting from USB was possible. Most of the computers I built were pre-USB at all (dating myself here).

I did some more looking around and talked with the builder. We're going with an Asus GT640 video card. From NewEgg.com they are around $112 with 2GB onboard. That should be sufficient for my purposes and the price is decent. We're also putting in two 120GB SSDs - one for the OS, one for the scratch disk.

Then I'll move my 1 and 3 terrabyte SATA drives over for data storage as well as my two DVD burners. Eventually I'll consider upgrading to a BluRay burner, but I mostly am using the drivers for data storage, not for video production. I have two for when I need to copy disks, but I really don't need that much anymore. Making a disk image is more efficient these days, though when I first started disk copying, disk space was too limited to do that for DVD disks.

I've been upgrading PhotoShop since PhotoShop Elements 3. Adobe offered a cheap ($150) upgrade to full PS. I waited until the last moment to upgrade from my old version so I jumped two or three versions with each upgrade. With their new subscription online model, I may not upgrade again. That's another reason to upgrade my computer now, so I can keep using my current PS CS6 as long as possible.