Thats why I went with a higher end PC; I shouldnt have to upgrade for a few years now.  Plus there was also the fact that the sales associate goofed on the price and I ended up getting 400.00 off, so it was meant to be.
Im also running a 23" monitor with 1920x1080 true HD resolution, so the extra goodies I got Im sure will help keep everything running nicely. Definitely a nice upgrade from my older 19" 4/3 aspect ratio monitor.

I bought a new desktop PC yesterday with Windows 7 and so far it's playing quite nicely with my main programs (Lightroom 1.4, Corel PSP12, Dynamic HDR4, AVG9.0 anti-virus).  Boot-up is blazingly fast but then I also have a 1.8gb Video Card and 12gigs of RAM.  My previous pc had Vista but I ditched it and went with XP home.  So far so good!

I just upgraded to a nice machine with 12 gigs of RAM, a 1.8gb video card and Windows 7.  My previous machine had Vista, but like many others I ditched Vista and got an OEM XP home disk. 
Windows 7 so far runs my programs nicely, so for now I'm still a PC guy.

I like that first image.  It looks to me like more of a personal creativity lens than for stock potential, or do you think there could be some stock potential as well?

I'll just mention this site and my experiences with it since according to a search there's no information here about it as of yet.

Quickpixels.com is a small Canadian Stock agency which looks to have been around since 2002.  The site is all RF with 4 standard image sizes available for download.  Pricing starts around 5.00 for XS and goes to around 50.00 or so for XL (3600 pixels long end).  Contributors set the prices and paid commission is 70%.  Images submitted and approved must remain there for at least one year.  Some image editing can be done once approved ie: changing keywords, but the contributor cannot delete any images or change the individual prices; this must be done via contacting the administer where it is done on their end.
Furthermore, the contributing to this agency is old school; meaning the contributor sizes the images to the specified size (3600 pixels long end 3/2 ratio or 3400px long end for 4/3 ratio), burned to CD and then sent to them via snail mail.

They are then posted online where the contributor then gleefully fills in the keywords and other information for each image (no automated IPTC info here).  Now all of this would be fine if there were sales, but I had over 200 images online there for 15 months without a single sale.  Judging from what I've seen there over the past 15 months, it looks like this agency gets very little in the way of contributions, with the overall database looking pretty sparse (they dont even register on Alexa).

The owner, Dan Roitner, has flip-flopped a bit on his policies.  For example, the T&C states that images on Quickpixels should not also be sold on Microstock-type sites, but now he told me doing this was OK.
I had submitted some images that at first he asked for a property release, then when I was unable to produce one rather than deleting them from the database he changed them to live status and available for sale.

Anyway the T&C also states that images there must remain live for one year, so now after 15 months I requested that my port be removed and my account deactivated.  He was quite reluctant to do this (my 220 image port probably was about 5% of his entire database).  Finally I got a rather curt responce from him and my account was deactivated and images removed.
I'm not posting this as a gripe; I gave them a try and it turned out to be a venture of wasted time and effort.  I'm posting this rather as a point of information should others place a search for this particular agency and want a bit of information; since there's not much else in the way of information about Quickpixels out there.
I really have no idea if anyone has made any sales there or if anyone has reached the 100.00 minimum payout (up until last year the minimum was 300.00).

I was going to start uploading there last month but at the time they were overloaded with new submissions.  So now they're accepting images but the ability to upload is pooched?

You should also make it a priority to apply to Shutterstock as they should do well for you.  They are a consistent high earner with many submitters.

Istock is the pickiest of the bunch and will readily reject a submitted image if the reviewer finds a couple perceived irrelevant keywords.  If oyu submit to Istock, get the free Deepmeta software for managing and submitting photos to Istock.

hint: they truly hate landscapes and anything aesthetically inclined.

Oh I may be in trouble then!  I've noticed that so far they have accepted some of my landscapes; even one involving tulips (tulip shots are hard to get accepted anywhere these days).  I'll keep plugging along and see what happens

Cool. I keep telling myself that I should upload more to Veer. Hopefully this will help our overall sales.

should we explain the meaning of F.U.B.A.R. as well? ;-)

Ive been watching this thread with a fair bit of interest as Ive also toyed with the idea of going exclusive with IS as Ive been eligible for awhile now.
IS accounts for roughly 2/3 of my total stock earnings and that has been consistent since March, but the kicker is that just one image in my port there is responsible for about 75% of what I earn at IS (its double flamed now). If that image loses popularity, which Im sure it will eventually, then my IS earnings will drop significantly unless other images step up to the plate for me.
Here's where my involvement with DT has helped me put the brakes on doing anything rash due to that 6 month image period.
However I may reconsider going exclusive with IS once I reach the 2500 DL tier, which should be within a year's time.

ah great thanks!