If you have a single processor PC, yes it is likely that the program will overrun the processor and the hard drive and your machine will seem unresponsive at times. Any program that scans through your hard disk, storing info about various files can be quite intensive, and that is really just the nature of a single processor machine.

If you have 2-4GB of RAM and at least a dual core processor, it should not have a devastating impact on your machine. If you have a lot of files, and/or you have a lot of images then YES; Lightroom as with any other program is going to take a while to run - expect several hours to over night to run.

To speed things up even more get a second hard drive. That is going to make a *huge* difference!
Reading and writing to the same hard drive will likely nearly double your processing time.
If you can keep your images separate from the catalog and even better, keep both of those separate from your system drive, you'll get maximum throughput for reading, writing and for your system's virtual memory processing.


Now, if you have a dual processor machine and more than 2G of memory, it sounds like a different problem.
Possibly storing everything on a USB or NAS drive? Throughput from either *can* be quite a bottleneck. (Some NAS drives feel slower than floppies, regardless of being stated as 1Gb throughput on the connection).


(edit)
I guess I type too slow...
With a QuadCore and 4G of RAM, you should NOT be seeing this behavior.
If you had Vista I would argue that, but Windows 7 Professional is a perfectly good OS now.
I'm at a loss a the moment.

Cannot disagree with anything said, but if you want to get some of that color back it is a 30-60 second fix to change the white background to a decent blue. Dunno if PSE allows for different draw modes, but hopefully the following will work for PSE

Pick up the brush tool.
Set the brush to about the color of blue you want.
Set the draw mode to "Darker Color".
Set Opacity to 50%
You now just paint roughly over the white. No need to be too careful.

Anything lighter than your brush color will go blue. Everything darker will stay untouched.
The gray twigs wil remain visible even if slightly lighter than your brush since you're only at 50%.

Dab over some areas with the Blur brush if the color transition is too rough and you get sharp edges appearing.

OK, this doesn't work in all cases, but it seems to work well on this one. (and no need for pesky masking , where even with CS5 can take a few extra minutes).

Sounds like a nice lens!
Its apparently shock-proof too with unlimited life span!

If I keep reading, I bet I'll find it'll wash my socks and clean up the backyard after putting out the Rottweilers.

Dunno about SilkyPix running on multiple machines, but you can Run Lightroom on multiple machines (and multiple OSes), as long as only one instance is running per license. It is great that I can take my Windows laptop to the client site, import to Lightroom, then come home and transfer the catalog to my Mac desktop Lightroom without having two licenses.

Sadly, Silkypix licensing agreement was far too strict in the US, so when I switched form Windows to Mac they wanted me to buy a whole new license. F-that! I instead spent that money on a competing and much more complete product.
The UK reseller has more business sense than the US side. So that part of my sob story doesn't necessarily apply.

Nope.
Make sure you don't have some of the corrections turned on? HDR, shadow correction, hilight correction or distortion correction, etc...?

Used to have SilkyPix, and except for their licensing bulls@$%, I loved the software.
At the time I thought it handled RAW conversion better than LR2.
Even though LR2 had all the tagging and logging of files, I preferred SilkyPix

Now comes LR3 with all its bells and whistles.
LR has so much more control of what and where you make changes. e.g. a little dodge and burn to a face (not the whole image!!), etc...

SilkyPix used to have some pretty good noise reduction with RAW files. LR3 now blows noise reduction out of the water and nearly eliminates the ned for other software. You might get slightly better results with some of the other products, but for 99% of my needs it is now all I need.

There is no way I'd go back to SilkyPix

Mac OS natively supports reading NTFS.
It will not write to NTFS partitions.
Naturally, there are third party drivers (free and otherwise) that allow solid reliable read and write to NTFS drives.

From what I read, the K5 hardware is capable of supporting SDXC, but not until a later software update is made available.

So, yes, and no.

Dunno the exact spec on SDXC, but Mac OS X is supposed to support it. So I do not believe it is directly related to NTFS. (I do not believe Mac natively supports writing to NTFS yet).

Congrats Thoughton. Very well deserved.
I saw your entry and thought I should have done more to modify my entry (as suggested).

Sadly, I've barely time to submit what I had.
I am making a concerted effort to do less work and take more photos... but the darned bills keep getting in the way and telling me to do otherwise.

[/quote]you say you get what you pay for and you are right but its like people say why buy a pentax when you can get a canon or nikon,[/quote]And some would say "that may be acceptable".
There are certain things that Pentax just does not do as well as its $8000 competitors.
Nothing to be ashamed of... if the $1000 body works for what you need then it is worth it.

If you *need* 10 frames a second, ISO 128000, shooting to two memory cards at once, a broad and easy-to-find selection of any lens you need (including 600mm f/4), then Pentax is NOT going to cut it.

I cannot compete in the same arena as my friend with the Nikon D3S because he is quite capable of shooting action stopping shutter speeds in very low light (ISO 12800) and maintain sellable products at a higher quality than *his* competitors.
If my market changes and I have a need for that style of shooting, I will need to change brands (or perpetually wait until Pentax catches up... )


So yes, it still applies... you get what you pay for.
Is it acceptable? For now, for me, Yes!
And quite honestly, for probably 90% of people who buy SLRs, Pentax does plenty.
I have to laugh when the soccer moms come up to me asking for advice on a *cheap lens* because she cannot afford anything else after getting the $6000 camera body.


Although I'll tell ya, having a flash sync speed of 1/500 would help me out a lot.
Or if Pentax would simply not have crippled the camera to disable the flash sync pins at 1/180 I'd be a lot less likely to switch brands right now. Taking action shots even with a fast with flash and a Pentax still results in too much motion blur if you have to work where there is ambient light.