New Computer Advice for Premiere CS5
 

Does Dell HP or someone else offer a system that is build to accommodate the Mercury Engine that Adobe requires? It seems like the only advice is self build which I'm not interested in.

There are specialists who can build systems for you. One is ADK Video Editing. I'm sure there are others.

ADK built a laptop for me that runs Production Premium CS5 just beautifully. I edit AVCHD files natively (without transcoding) on it without problems.

So look around. It's going to take a company that specializes in video and/or audio workstations.

Just for fun I configured two HP systems, a Z400 and a Z800, but they were still lacking in features that I require. Their prices were not lacking however, $ 10 K for a Z400 and $ 21+ K for a Z800.

If you want to burn money, HP and Dell are a sure way to do that effectively.

I don't think it's necessary to build from scratch, or pay a lot of money.
You can order a Dell (I'm thinking something like the Studio XPS 9000) Intel i7, 12 GB tri RAM, a single SATA system drive, with a low end graphics card for a pretty modest price (maybe around $1300). Then you can yourself add a RAID drive, export drive, maybe a BR burner, and a Mercury compatable GPU for a few more $$$.
So, probably the whole CS5 capable system for around $ 2,000 +/- (not including monitor).
This is what I have done for many years with quite satisfactory results.
Whatever you choose, you do need to be sure the power supply is adequate for the final configuration- particularly if you end up with one of the 200w nVidea GPUs.

Haha, gotta love Harm. He should have known that he would get at least 25% off the HP price as I did.

Now for real....Robert has a great strategy for buying the base system and adding parts yourself. Dell is notorious for way overcharging on upgrades, such as $600 for a 1TB drive which costs $80. For large OEM, I prefer HP because their workstations are designed for the video industry.

For custom PC builders in the US, I like Puget Systems (I see you are in Canada but I don't know if Puget ships to you).

Greg,

Check your mail. I have made contact for you and Eric knows how to get in touch with you.

if you are looking for laptops you could check out sager notebooks.

i myself have a 15inch sager 8690 that comes with an nvidia 280m and a core i7 720 qm. however i only edit 720p avchd videos and you will probably need the 840qm or 920xm for 1080p videos.
they also sell 17inch desktop replacements with desktop cpu's and enough space for 3 hdd's and the new 480m gpu.
i believe the adk laptop mentioned above is a rebrand of a sager nb.