Interesting re graphics card being a 'requirement'. I'd check into that further - what I've been told may have been wrong. Re dropping frames: I believe that that can be as much to do with disk contention as anything - processes etc. trying to write to the hard drive at the same time (hence the preference for a dedicated capture disk), badly fragmented drive etc. How much memory did the Dell have? I think it's widely agreed that 512MB is the workable minimum. Also, watch out for background processes and memory leak - I usually reboot before starting to edit.

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