Replying to Tony Parker post: I use Fractint because it is still the most accurate of the rendering progs, and it can zoom far deeper and with higher iteration count, both of which are most important to me. Also, it is easy to create batch files to run Fractint in auto mode and create animations, which is what my programs do. As for your bare-bones Pentium-4 idea, I advise otherwise! I spent much of last year using 3 systems and various operating system/configurations to optimize Fractint. I conclusively found that the Pentium-3 works better than Pentium-4. Presumeably, something to do with the chip/instruction set etc.; Pentium-4 does not like DOS. Use a Pentium-3. Also, run Fractint in native DOS (not a windoze shell), loaded without TSR's, himem or emm386 or windows drivers. Clean DOS works best. I created a separate bootable partition and did a "sys c:" command from a boot floppy to create a clean DOS OS for Fractint, and have been using it for all my animations.