Coop, I responded earlier, but doesn't seem to have made it up here.
My guess is you will want to upgrade the motherboard, ram and CPU. I would recommend a dual core AMD64 or the new Core 2 Duo that Intel is about to release. Because of this new core from Intel, AMD is slashing their prices right now, it is a good time to be buying.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/07/...out_athlon_64/
I am running a dual setup, and everything you want should work fine, usually, anything that is it's own window (say a layer dialog) can be put wherever you want.
The setup I am running here at work, I have a 24" lcd (1920x1200) and a 21" LCD (1600x1200) and this looks to the OS as if it is one monitor of 3520x1200). The 24" LCDs have dropped a huge amount the last year or so, and can be had for around $850 (
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en...7-1844961.html is the one I have). I have noticed that these are in the small business section of most web sites, not the consumer section.
--Carl