I'm working in Photoshop CS6 and multiple browsers a lot. I'm not using them all at once, so sometimes some applications are minimized to taskbar for hours or days.

The problem is, when I try to maximize them from the taskbar - it sometimes takes longer than starting them! Especially Photoshop feels really weird for many seconds after finally showing up, it's slow, unresponsive and even sometimes totally freezes for minute or two.

It's not a hardware problem as it's been like that since always on all on my PCs.

Would I also notice it after upgrading my HDD to SDD and adding RAM (my main PC holds 4 GB currently)? Could guys with powerful pcs / macs tell me - does it also happen to you?

I guess OSes somehow "focus" on active software and move all the resources away from the ones that run, but are not used. Is it possible to somehow set RAM / CPU / HDD priorities or something, for let's say, Photoshop, so it won't slow down after long period of inactivity?