You can get a Dell with a Core 2 Quad 2.4 Q6600, 3GB dual channel RAM, 500GB SATA HD, 16X DVD+-RW for $500.

Dip into the leftover $1500 to buy a nice video card and a terabyte of storage and you'll still have a large chunk of money left over... like possibly almost $1,000


Or buy a refurbished iMac ??? I guess it all depends on what you're looking to get for your money....

The reconditioned Mac Pros at the Apple store start out at $1800. I've bought almost all of my Macs reconditioned and haven't regretted it yet.

Still, that doesn't leave you with much money to upgrade the memory and drives, but it might be an option. Another thing you should consider is the cost of software, if you already have all the software paid for that you need, and you have useable PATA drives, you'll need to get SATA ones for internal use, then replacing your entire platform might not be that good of an idea.

iMacs can use a second monitor in a dual head situation.

Just more things to consider, for and against the Mac platform.

Yes, unless you are talking about uncompressed (or compressed at a very high bitrate) out of the HDMI port. So long as it's the compressed stream coming out of the firewire, it's no problem. You could even do that with a 5400RPM drive (so long as it's defagged).

I would think you could get a dual quad core (8 cores total) machine for under $2K. I know you could build one from parts for under $2K.

Moved from Canon HV to HD Editing Solutions.

24" white iMac
 

The 24" white iMac has been discontinued, but you can still buy it refurbished with one year warranty (about 1450$).

The screen is simply gorgeous. When you put 3Gb RAM into it (recommend crucial.com RAM) you get a good performance. The screen is, unlike the newer, glossy screens, easy to calibrate. It has a Core 2 Duo chip.

It's simply a good machine, and a very good alternative to the MacPro.

There are no fans, so you can work in silence.

Just ordered an HP Pavilion Ultimate d4999t and customized as follows

Quad Q6700 (2.66GHZ)
4G RAM
512 Geoforce 8600GT
640GB RAID O (2 X 320) Dual SATA Drives
Sound Blaster Xtreme
15-1 memory card reader
Lightscribe DVD 16X burner
802.11 b/g Wireless LAN card
Norton 15 months
Vista 32 bit (64 bit available at same price)
Wireless keyboard and mouse
W2408h 24" monitor

$1861 inc tax and delivery- the rep on the phone gave me an additional $150 off the already discounted published price on their website

I should add that I've always been a Dell customer but the same Dell config was several hundred dollars more

Nice!
 

Art,

That sounds like an awesome system at a great price. I don't need the monitor, so I'm guessing I would be about $400 lower.

Is your processor 64 bit? If it is, why wouldn't you go with Vista 64-bit? Wouldn't that better allocate tasks to your processor? Also, since there is no price difference, could you switch to 64-bit in the future for zero or just a small charge?

One thing you need to take into consideration is what software do you use right now?

If you currently use a PC based NLE well then you should stick with a PC. If you already own and use FCP then a Mac would be your only good option.

You need to think about not only how much the system itself is going to cost you but how much the software is going to cost. If you buy Apple system and you want to edit with it you will have to buy FCP Studio for $1,200.00. That pretty much leaves you with $800.00 to use for the hardware. A Apple computer is pretty useless for video editing if you don't get FCP Studio to go with it. This means that even if you picked up a Mac Pro for $2,800.00 you will have a mininum cost of $4,000.00 by the time you get the software you need. This doesn't even cover video storage yet. So if you already use a PC and PC software and you have a $2,000.00 budget then the Apple path is totally out of the question unless you want to try to run FCP Studio on a Mac Mini which doesn't really work very well at all.

PC Decision
 

Thanks for all the input everyone.

I've decided to go with another PC because I just can't afford to get into Mac when I factor in all the software too. Now it's time to figure out which PC will be the best deal. I have ruled out used and refurbished. I don't want to build my own either. I keep coming back to HP in the little shopping I've done. Maybe I could find a better deal with some off-brand, but I want to stay mainstream.

Any advice?