I tweaked the Dell (with 512 MB of memory) and shutdown all the non-essential processes. I ran Premiere Pro and Ulead after rebooting and am still having jerky playback problems. The CPU is running at or near 100% most of the time. Less taxing parts of the video show up better, but any video that has a transition or effect added to it looks horrible. Everything renders without problem, but trying to edit video as it stands now will be a nightmare. My question again: can this be fixed with a video card or is likely more a memory problem? I would like to get a video card (maybe the 128 M Geforce MX 4000 8X I mentioned before) and other 512 of memory but I don't think the powers that be will allow it. It will have to be the memory or the video card, not both.