best older illustration software

[sophiarosehips]

Hi all,
I need illustration software to create book covers. I'm running Windows XP on a pc that was high end about 5 years ago (good graphics card at the time, a GeForce 7800 I think). I have 4 GB of RAM. I doubt it can handle the latest version of something like PaintShop Pro, so I thought I'd see if you all had advice about what I should get and I'll order it on eBay. Let me know what specifics you need to know about the pc, if any.

Thanks!

 

[lxskllr]

Gimp
http://www.gimp.org/

Inkscape
http://inkscape.org/

 

[corkyg]

I run PaintShop Pro XI on a XP machine with 2 GB of RAM - no problem.