In article ernet,
Longfellow wrote:

What is the experience of CS4 users in these regards? What sort of
system works best? What sort of system works well enough that using it
is not an onerous task? What am I looking at here? And what is it that
I don't understand; what question do I need to ask that I'm not asking?

the most important thing is get as much memory as possible. more than
4 gig of memory (and 64 bit) will help with really huge images (1-2 gig
and up) but if you edit more normal sized images, 32 bit is fine.

also check the list of supported gpus, since cs4 utilizes it for a
number of features and more in the future.

Another question: What is the experience with good LCD monitors? What
is a "good" LCD monitor and why is it "good"? I've got a couple of good
CRT monitors, but don't know that they can be replaced. The guy that
talks up the Apple system claims to have one, but he says that it's very
expensive (presumably it's an Apple monitor). What is the reality here?
Anyone know?

look for s-ips panels (not always easy to determine). apple makes nice
displays but so do other companies and they all speak dvi. many users
like to have two smaller displays rather than one huge display, with
one for the photo itself and the other for palettes, etc. you will
also want a color puck to calibrate it.