Google earth (March 2007) version?

hey ive got googleearth and the quality aint so good the terrain quality is poor and the over all image is smudgy. and it moves very slow so wen i get to a location i have to wait for the deails to develop and it is sluggish. What can settings can i tweek to make it run at efficiently? and is it true that there is a live version of google earth and how do i get it? thanx