Updated.

My eldest daughter is a cartoon animator. Irish animators are very highly regarded and she is one of the best.
The company she works for recently upgraded to a new system and had to change their computers. After hearing about my recent travails she asked for one of the discarded ones and I got it on Thursday. It is a monster, more like a mainframe than a P.C. It has everything you could ask for. 7.5 gig of RAM, dual processor, state of the art graphics card and sound card, and a huge 22 inch widescreen monitor.
My two boys spent the last two days tailoring it to my needs and I was let loose on it today.
I'm like a child in a sweetshop.