Illustrator CS4 keeps quitting unexpectedly!!

Question

Hello geniuses!!
We need your help!!
We're graphic designers and our Illustrator CS4 keeps quitting unexpectedly when:
> We try to go to print from Illustrator
> Working on files over approx. 600MB
(Also, it's taking about 5mins to open a 667MB Illustrator file!! I feel like it didn't take that long on my old eMac)
Ever since we got new computers last November 2012 this has been happening (as well as permissions problems). Our computers were bought second hand but were still in their boxes. We loaded our own CS4 and had a lot of problems initially getting CS4 to run properly on this operating system.
Computer 1 (we're working on the file on this computer):
iMac 20 inch
OSX 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion)
Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 3GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics:  ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128 MB
Software:  OS X 10.8.3 (12D78)
+ (we've got a '20-inch DVI (1680 x 1050)' screen hooked up to this one, acting as a moniter only)
Computer 2 (the other computer, networked):
iMac 24 inch
OSX 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion)
Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics:  NVIDIA GeForce 8800 G5 512MB
Software:  OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)
Computer 1 is quitting unexpectedly often;
Computer 2 is also quitting but not as often.
Help!!
Is there a phone number to ring for this kind of specific problem?? or do you think we'd just end up on hold for a million years.
Thx for any advice you can offer!
The Team at Blush

Answer 1

BlushDesign wrote:
Hello geniuses!!
We need your help!!
We're graphic designers and our Illustrator CS4 keeps quitting unexpectedly when:
> We try to go to print from Illustrator
> Working on files over approx. 600MB
(Also, it's taking about 5mins to open a 667MB Illustrator file!! I feel like it didn't take that long on my old eMac)
Ever since we got new computers last November 2012 this has been happening (as well as permissions problems). Our computers were bought second hand but were still in their boxes. We loaded our own CS4 and had a lot of problems initially getting CS4 to run properly on this operating system.
Computer 1 (we're working on the file on this computer):
iMac 20 inch
OSX 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion)
Processor: 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 3GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics:  ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT 128 MB
Software:  OS X 10.8.3 (12D78)
+ (we've got a '20-inch DVI (1680 x 1050)' screen hooked up to this one, acting as a moniter only)
Computer 2 (the other computer, networked):
iMac 24 inch
OSX 10.8.3 (Mountain Lion)
Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory: 4GB 800 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Graphics:  NVIDIA GeForce 8800 G5 512MB
Software:  OS X 10.8.2 (12C60)
Computer 1 is quitting unexpectedly often;
Computer 2 is also quitting but not as often.
Help!!
Is there a phone number to ring for this kind of specific problem?? or do you think we'd just end up on hold for a million years.
Thx for any advice you can offer!
The Team at Blush
I would say RAM may be a big issue here. Mountain Lion is rather RAM hungry and to run Adobe CS requires even more grunt. I have my main Mac at 16GB Ram and the others on 8GB and CS$ (and CS^ - I just prefer 4) run extremely fast even with extremely large files.
Hope this helps.
Pete