Will the external hard drive have a compatible version of Windows installed on it?

Waaay back I always installed my programs on a separate partition rather than on the C: drive. Partitions are nothing more than another drive but on the same physical drive. So really there should be no difference, it is just another drive on the computer.

I am not sure why you need to know before buying the program though. Either you are interested in photo editing and graphics and need the program or not. Why not try another program you already own and install that? You can always remove it whether it works or not but you will be that much wiser.

If you are concerned about hard drive space my Corel Photosuite is slightly under 300 megs in size installed.

You'd still need to install it if you put it on the external drive. It would just be taking up space somewhere other than your C: drive. One disadvantage to running off an external drive is that most consumer external drives are either USB or firewire and a program will run slowly over either of those, especially something that is so graphics oriented.

Owbist....I have a partition and another drive on the computer that I could use, so that is an option...I was just thinking about this.

pk...would I "need" windows on a hard drive to do this?

bp..yep..the hard drive is USB

I am interested in graphics and photos, but wasn't sure how much space Photoshop would take

Is Photosuite different than Photoshop? Which is the best?

Adobe Photoshop and Corel Photosuite are much the same. Corel has lost much of it's lustre in recent years sadly but the program is solid. The full suite of Adobe is close to $600 but you can get older versions or stripped down new versions for much less. Take a squint at Amazon or eBay to get some idea of pricing.

I'm thinking of going that Adobe route...and that's sort of what I figured it would cost, but I'd hate to get it and then feel that it takes up too much space on my computer..that's why I asked the external hard drive question....