Thanks Phil as it happens I've been looking at v carve and aspire for some time and was going to call them again tomorrow for some more advice. I have to convince myself that the set up will work. I have an iMac and the general consensus is to get vectric on the iMac via virtual space and then prepare everything on iMac send file to a dropbox and from the Pacer terminal which is XP open. This is where I think it needs some tweaking in a post processor or something from what vectric were suggesting.
This potentially sounds a bit scary and don't want to mess anything up on the Pacer. I know it's doable as many years ago this is the set up Artform had and it worked well just no idea how it worked, wish I was a bit more computer literate then. I will look into this a bit more so thanks again.