(Help?) How good is the digi 001 for mixing

I am thinking about upgrading my studio. I already have digi 001 with a mac g3 @ 350 Mhz. The question is when mixing I can't use a lot of RTAS effects which mean I can't eq a lot of the sounds I want. Somebody told me I need a faster computer. What would be a good computer to get and if I bought it would it allow basic mixing. (e.g. eq on every track, a little compression, 1 or 2 reverb type effects).

P.S. I was going to the limit on my demo songs which was only 10 tracks total and I only used plug ins such as channel strip and was running into memory full problems. Is this normal?

You should create a couple auxilary tracks with just plug-ins and then send your signal(through bussing) to the auxilary track which has that effect. This way you can have one instance of (let's say) D-Verb going at one time for one track and send how ever many instruments to that track and they all get reverb. Plug-ins work like little programs. So everytime you apply D-Verb individually to each track, you just opened up a new program that uses up system resources. Plus, add that on to the fact that you got Pro-Tools running.

With the new Pro Tools 6.0, which should be out within the next month or so, Pro Tools will be able to be run on OSX and take full advantage of dual processor G4's. Which means if you get a new dual 1gig or more, you will be able to use tons of plugin's. The catch? Non of your current plugins will work in OSX. You will have to upgrade all of them. But even if you keep using the current version of PT, you will be able to get many more plugins than on your G3. Either way, you should get a dual processor Mac or you will regret it later.

Unfortunately, LE sux for a real mixing situation. I just did some mixes that were coming off of LE and into a SSL. The program shut down soon after stacking up the plugins. I ended up doing major edits on the vocals,
to avoid using the noisegate plugins. I also left some of the vocal tracks with only compression and no following eq. The mixes still turned out super tight (buffing my knuckles...).

You don't need to eq every track either. Record it right, and find the right level in the mix. I'll take a compressor over an eq anyday. The better you get - the less eq you'll use. If you can, go out of the 001 and into a decent mixer. Set up stereo subgroups and eq them together.

Hoax has some good advice on using your efx plugins efficiently. That's the way you'd be doing it if you're mixing on a console. Efx are never on the inserts. Either auxes or busses.