Timbre2,

This may have no bearing on your problem in Painter 6 but I remember in Painter 5, if my program took a long time to load, it was because I had many more fonts than 300 fonts loaded. My point is that maybe too many fonts are interfering with the Painter's text tool. If you have some kind of font manager, you could remove your less essential fonts and see if that helps. (This is just a guess.)

I also know that Painter seems to enjoy being the star of the show. Meaning that it works best if you only have Painter running. (And to make certain Painter's feelings aren't hurt, I will re-start the computer so that Painter is the first program I run in a given computing session -- no internet, nothing -- just Painter. Computing has gotten so complex these days, you just can't tell what is the culprit sometimes).

And finally, always take time to speed disk or defrag your hard drive. That will also help Painter run better.

Re: Painter 7
I have no contact with Corel but from what I've read and from the fact that a month or so ago they (Corel) had a live chat with program developers that was open to the public. I would expect that a Painter 7 is in development. We'll have to see.

Good Luck,

Athe