I'm starting to see that an apple/mac computer is the easiest and straight forward to use with the 5DMII and final cut for software ,what i am asking is how much of a computer do i need ,i'm a pc guy vista 64 4 gigs ram hugh hd's so in a mac/apple what is the equivalent and a desktop or notebook

Stan, before you blow a big wad on something, do yourself a favor, and just download the Cineform trials of Neo HD and NeoScene. I do not see what can be simpler than the system Cineform uses to get your 5D stuff into editable form...

I have been holding off buying neoscene ,have tired the trial and its fine ,used it with vegas pro 9.0,its just i heard it is smoother with mac and final cut .
I'll order the neoscene this week

OK my two ...

I have a early 2008 mac pro 2.8 octo and it takes some time to render the 5d clips. 8gb ram and a big raid 5. I recently did and internal software raid with 3 1TB drives. That seems to be very fast.

I recently bought the sandisk FW800 reader and that is a nice piece too. under $100 and worth every penny for transfer to HDD

SO... I think my machine is a bare minimum unless you are ready for a bunch of walk away renders. Even with cineform et al. I have friends with "newer" PCs and they just can't deal with it.

I am not a pc editor so I really don't know about that side of things. I came here today to see if anyone is reporting the allegedly easier importing with the new Final Cut Studio box. Mine is on the way. Appearantly we can burn to BR disk now :)

Best