Mike, you said you bought...

XP 64-bit SP3, Quad-cores, and 8 Gigs of memory

My needs are for general business use. Word processor, spreadsheets, map scanning, map drawing, heavy internet use. I have the fastest DSL my telco offers.

I need speed. In my work, time is of the essence. I need a smoking machine, I hate waiting on the computer. What you bought above, would that help someone like me or is that unnecessary overkill?

Right now, I'm looking at a Dell with 4gb ram, 320 gb hd and Win XP for about $900 - $1100.