Awesome, vansmith. Thanks!

Nick, I was just being funny. Obviously I know my laptop is... in his delicate senior years, but thanks for the other information. I'm lacking severely in hardware knowledge (apparently) so all I see is "bigger number = better" and everything else my brain renders as "syntax error".

I see technologist mentioned adding more RAM. I hunted around the webz and saw that some folks have gotten the early MBPs to work with 6GB of RAM and it seems like switching to a SSD would improve performance as well. All this gives me another idea: I would like to extend the life of my little old MBP, but I don't see the screen lasting more than another couple years before it becomes unreasonable to use it for any serious work. Would it be worth it to buy a new laptop and upgrade the old MBP with new RAM and an SSD - this way I can keep the old one as a backup or use it simultaneously for itunes and email and wordprocessing stuff while I'm busy on my new laptop with Adobe CS5 applications? Or if I choose to keep one laptop at the photo studio and one at the home office (or wherever I am) I should be able to access each laptop remotely from the other as long as both are on and connected to a network, right? These possibilities seem infinitely handy. Thoughts?