I hear you, my main advice to you and everyone is to be cautious in upgrading, save yourself much needless aggravation, I myself wish I could have a Mac Pro and do things 'quicker' now the key element in all this is "quicker" if you do not have a reference point then how do you know if what you are working on is already speedy? it hard to tell unless you have had an older machine or an older version of lets say:Final Cut, and a rendition would often take ten minutes instead of ten seconds in today's machine? I've been most aggravated in situations like these because like yourself Im trying to squeeze the last penny and the last processing juice of our machines (nothing wrong with that,everyone does it) but we need to recognize the limitations of what we have, those thirty dollars for an a teeny bit of extra speed turn out a lesson in software abstractions and headache no less, it will happen from here to eternity, I've seen it since Jaguar, I have read enough posts with similar expression time and time again, I don't want to make you feel inadequate, I would like to direct you to the proper expectation and resolve. Now since you have posted more symptoms I can help you check a couple of things: Check to see if you Ram modules are properly installed, it you have two modules take one out and restart your machine, try it with the other, it could be a bad ram module, try also a Ram Zap (option+command+o+f) hold these while restarting, let go until you hear a second chime, check, if I remember anything else Ill post it for you.
