PSE 7 too buggy?

For the second time, I have tried to make the transition from PSE 4 to PSE 7 and for the second time, I am considering reverting. Is anyone else finding it too buggy to be really useful? I have noticed two main problems so far. The first is performance and may be related to my 3 year old computer. I have an HP Pavilion with and AMD Athlon 64 processor, 1MB of RAM at 986 Mhz. This seems to me to meet the systems requirements but, do I need to upgrade. Usually, PSE 7 will load as quickly as PSE 4 and will allow me to select and edit one or two photos. From there on, the program goes into calender timing mode. Literally, when I try to Save-As an edited photo, it can take 10-25 minutes to complete. Once that occurs, Catalog back-ups are equally slow. What normally takes me 8-10 minutes to do a full backup to a removable hard disc can take hours once the system slows down.

The second bug is that I work in the file folder mode. When I edit and save-as a photo sometimes with a different file name but always to a different folder, it appears to work successfully and, looking at ''My Pictures'' the edited photo is there. Unfortunately, it is often not in the Catalog. I haven't tried the date-view mode so I don't know if I'd have the same trouble. My method or organizing, that I have used since I began with PSE 4 almost requires I be in file-folder mode.

As an aside, using this forum, is there some way to return to where I was in the forum list once I complete reading a topic? When the topic is on page 2 or later of the list and I finish and hit back, it always returns me to page 1 of the list, not the page I was on when I selected the topic to read.

PSE 7 too buggy?

The extreme performance problems you're experienced aren't due to the specs of your computer -- 1 GB of memory on a 1 GHz processor should be fast enough.?You don't say if you're on XP or Vista (Vista does better with more memory), but 1 GB is sufficient.?(However, adding another 1 or 2 GB of memory would only cost about $50 and be the more effective upgrade for the money.)?Something else is going on.

The second bug is that I work in the file folder mode. When I edit and save-as a photo sometimes with a different file name but always to a different folder, it appears to work successfully and, looking at ''My Pictures'' the edited photo is there. Unfortunately, it is often not in the Catalog.PSE 7 too buggy?

Thank you.

Is the File folder view so buggy that the catalog is corrupted or files actually lost or would the combination of the F5 function and switching back and forth between folder and date view be workable?

Just a quick link to the published System Requirements

http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/systemreqs/

1GB of RAM should be enough, but as John mentions, more is better and it's inexpensive these days. Adding RAM is probably the #1 thing you could do to make your system perform better.

As for CPU, 2 GHZ is the stated requirement for PSE7. We don't test on sub 1 GHZ machines. No reason to believe it shouldn't work, but every reason to believe it would be slow.

And...yes... Folder View indeed needs some work.

Is the File folder view so buggy that the catalog is corrupted or files actually lost or would the combination of the F5 function and switching back and forth between folder and date view be workable?

Thanks for the information.

In PSE 7, I'm struggling with work flow techniques which worked very well in PSE 4. I often make trips and photograph a number of different kinds of subjects. Some will be wildlife, some birds, and some landscape. Especially with wildlife and birds, I often get photos of the same species at varying times and with separate cameras.

My first goal in workflow is to separate the photos into four categories: ones that can be instantly deleted, ones that, comparing them to others of the same type I will delete later, ones I will keep for my off-line library but not immediately process, and ones that I will process, keep on my hard disk, and use for whatever purpose I have at the time. To do this well, it is critical that I be able to group photos of the same kinds of subjects together for comparison.

This works well by renaming each photo with a common name for the species or subject and retaining the camera image number as part of the file name when I'm in folder view mode (in PSE 4). With the bugginess of folder view in PSE 7, does anyone have any suggestions about a workflow scheme to accomplish the same objectives in date view (given the fact that photos of the same species are often taken on different dates)?

This works well by renaming each photo with a common name for the species or subject and retaining the camera image number as part of the file name when I'm in folder view mode (in PSE 4). With the bugginess of folder view in PSE 7, does anyone have any suggestions about a workflow scheme to accomplish the same objectives in date view (given the fact that photos of the same species are often taken on different dates)?

Just a quick update. PSE 7 apparently does not function well on 1GB of ram operating at 1Ghz under Windows XP. All of the problems I described in my original post went away as soon as I updated to 3GB of ram at 1Ghz. Thanks for all the help.