But a computer-related one, nonetheless.

So, I was thinking about it, and though I have some tinkering I can do on my laptop to try to get the most juice out of it when trying to build and render maps in GIMP, without this so far it tends to stall out when working on larger files. (Particularly, it stalls and I lose drop-down-menu functionality when I have large and intricate areas selected.)

But, besides tinkering to turn off virus scanners and whatnot, I was thinking I also have the 8-year-old boat anchor at home. It runs Windows ME, but it's got another decent processor, 512 MB of memory and 32 MB of dedicated graphics.

So... is there anyway I can string it up and slave it to my laptop (a dual-core with 2 GB of memory running Vista) and have it help, even if just a little, when I'm working on maps while at home? Anybody out there have experience with that sort of thing? I'll admit when I've tried to network computers together running different OSes (no matter they're all Microsoft), it's usually a bugaboo for me. But I figure if I can put that unused horsepower to work, even though it's not much, it might be enough to help. I just don't know how.