[sanddrag]

Originally Posted by s_forbes

Have you tried running it without all of the graphics intensive display options? Get rid of the background image (options>colors - choose a plain color) and poke around through some of the other options to get rid of things you don't need.

I ran Solidworks for a few years on a 1.5Ghz Intel dual core with 1 gig of RAM (XP) and was able to build some pretty complex models without issue.

I've tried Solidworks 2008 on a Pentium T2330 (1.6 GHz Dual Core) with 2 gigs of DDR2 RAM and Intel mobile graphics and it was a real dog. You could use it, if you didn't mind waiting a while, for everything.

And to answer the OP, in my opinion yes, it is important to be running Windows 7 64-bit. I doubt there's much if any difference between the versions (home, pro, ultimate) for Solidworks use, but don't hold me to that.

Can you get more access time at school? Does the school have any capable computer lab they can put Solidworks on for you. Do you have a dedicated teacher they can give keys and an alarm code to for after-hours access?