Thanks, I will take a look.

Since yesterday my computer has suddenly gone very flaky. I have gotten blue screens about a dozen times. Up until yesterday I had never gotten one. Each time the problem seems to be something different. Nothing has changed, but something bad has suddenly developed. I am suspicious of Adobe Flash because the blue screens, I think, have always happened when using either Firefox or IE on a website that used Flash a lot. Not 100% sure of that though. Before the blue screens I had been getting Flash crashes in the browser several times a day starting about 2 weeks ago. I am using the latest Flash. Anyway, if I can't get this computer working again then I may end up buying a new one sooner than I expected. Flying to Hawaii in 5 more days so I will wait until we are there so that I don't have to carry the new one with me.

Yesterday I took out the 8gb that I put in 6 weeks ago and put the old 4gb back in. Problem solved, no more blue screens. Of course, I had a sneaking suspicion that it was a memory problem, but usually if there is a problem with new memory it shows up soon, I think. In my case the new memory was fine for 6 weeks and then suddenly it failed. I am glad to get the computer working again, but I leave for Hawaii soon so probably don't have time to deal with getting the bad memory replaced right now.

Blue screens are usually ram related not always but it's a sign things are iffy ram wise.
I gave up using micron/crucial ram because I had too many returns for faulty memory, and quite slow/poor service actually very poor service, they've been relegated to my junk list.
Kingston are usually quite good, but as ever you can get iffy ram from any maker.

After getting to Hawaii in a few more days I will try to get an RMA so I can get the 8gb replaced. I hope the process doesn't take too long. At newegg.com it had a 5 star rating with 501 customer reviews, but I got unlucky and got a bad one.

The current 4gb is still usable, even with LR 4.1. Before changing to 8gb I used the 4gb while in Japan and processed lots and lots of photo using LR 4.1.

Quick update this end
I pulled the x4 AMD out and put the FX6100 in there in it's place
There is no improvement in the "lag" which appears when you first start LR4 up and switch modules. There is a good improvement in terms of exporting speed (as you would expect) not that I was unhappy with the previous CPU in this regard.
Slightly OT but quite an uplift for video conversions it's surprisingly fast (most of the reviews were applicable to the release price which is now a lot less) Applied for the cashback from AMD and got a confirmation email from AMD on that so the overall cost is a very reasonable £80 or so which is super bang per buck. Def an i-3 thumper this is a nice CPU which is very good at multi tasking and multi threaded applications (not as strong for low threaded applications though)

Onto LR, I have not yet seen it use over 2Gb of ram to date..despite the fact I am loaded up with 16Gb on this build.
I also note it does not max out all the cores in some exports (applicable across various CPU's and builds I've seen/used) so there is a question if it's as optimal as it could be CPU wise.

Win 7 will run very well for most folks even on 2Gb..4Gb is now my standard budget build (ram is very cheap) 8Gb if you're pushing the boat out a bit.
I even managed to run Win 7 on well under 1Gb and it's a lot better than Vista. With the Adobe aspect I believe it's simply a case of squashing the bugs and optimising the software some more. I can't say capture one sucks because some folks like it quite a lot, DxO I have not used that for a long time so can't really say. The trend is very much towards GPU acceleration in software and I believe some makers like Adobe have to play catch up here.

I have misplaced the ram receipt so I can't get a replacement from the manufacturer. I know I had it for several weeks, but we were on a road trip so on the go a lot and somewhere along the way it got lost. If LR can't use more than 2gb then it looks like having more ram is pointless for LR anyway. My 4gb is fine almost all the time and the only times I got over 90% ram usage were when I had LR + PSE 9 + Firefox (with a bunch of open tabs) + Windows Explorer all going at the same time and I had set luminance nr to some non-zero amount or if I ran catalog optimize. Otherwise the ram usage was much less and comfortable. Of course, my next computer will have more than 4gb in it. I do hate that I can't get a refund or at least some workable ram for the money I spent though.

I sent the 8gb ram back last month and they sent me new ram last week. It is installed and is working. Of course, the previous ram worked also for several weeks. I hope this ram doesn't die on me.

I saw that Corel released a new version of AfterShop Pro today:

http://www.corel.com/corel/pages/index.jsp?pgid=800161&ppid=4300004

I am using Lightroom 4.3 now and am pretty happy with it, but since I still have the ASP license I might download the new version just to see what it's like.

I've not tried that one that's the bibble corel takeover.
Though I looked at the benchmarks on the AMD FX processor and 600 images in 5 minutes is pretty damn fast.

I'd love to see LR get a real speed boost