Here's my system.

Windows XP
Celeron 2.40 GHz
640 MB of RAM

I'm running inkscape and it seems to render smoothly until I get in the neighborhood of 300 nodes.  Then things start grinding to a halt.  I'm looking at upgrading my system which is now 5 years old. 

Any suggestions on what configuration I would need to make using inkscape enjoyable?  It would be really great if I could handle 1000+ nodes without too much hassle. 

Any tips to increase render speed, ie working in outline mode, locking layers, using clones, keeping groups of nodes small, etc. 

Thanks!

--
I'm not a communist. I can have a potato chip. --Ben Stein