Krissel, many thanks.
Over many months I could not cure a problem that arose on my Maxtor external drive. Seems I copied a font that was on the OS9 part to my OSX part. Lots of stuff associated (I think) with the OSX Finder failed to respond - iLife, Safari, Console, Disk Utility etc. Will not go down that long road now.
Decided to buy a Quad (and added 4Gb Ram) because I am beginning to work with movies and have apps that are not compatible (yet) with Intel and I have heard that they run very slowly under Rosetta.
The Quad is not yet unpacked. Have so many things to sort out in my apartment first (have a new "Lebenspartner", 2 years after my dear wife died).
Probably the Quad manual tells me about compatible monitors but I felt an urge to talk again with friends at TS, where I have been visiting silently every day.
Best wishes
eric j