Need another computer

I am within weeks about to begin work on conversion and drawing using
Intellicad for some of those Raster to Vector files. Now, these have a
whole bunch of itty-bitty lines per file. This then runs the overall
file size up to between 50 and 80 meg. Very huge to handle, and then it
takes a good 45 minutes to first see the plan. It is slow work at
present, until the clean up gets done.

I am running on Windows 98 on a five year old computer. Would like to
upgrade the computer (but not the operating system) and wonder where a
point of diminishing returns will happen.

I can easily get a computer with a 1000 MHZ processor and big hard
drive, but will it really result in any visable speed in loading up and
viewing the huge images. As a practible, will a 500 or 700 MHZ work
just as well? I want to keep all the older plug-ins such as monitor,
keyboard, mouse, video cards and other things which plug into the main
board slots. 

Wm.