Thread: moving up from a macbook

Hi, I've decided to get a desk top PC and stop killing my macbook.
Problem is I have no idea what I need. Its for AVCHD editing.

If you bought now what would you buy (software and system). I have a good HD screen (new), most of my DV is 3min chunks of music video, its fun/but I sell a few.

I guess I could find £400 ($500) for this.
The main thing is ease of use, obviously I will use two hard drives, but what is a good graphics card now? I there a software for AVCHD video software that that will be better than my finalcut express?

Thanks for looking

I've always gone for custom PCs as you get more up to date processors, an Intel i5 or Intel i7 would be the way to go I only have an intel core 2 duo 3 ghz per core, 4 GB ram with XP and 1920x1080i takes just under 4 times real time to render for a simple edit, my friend with an i7 2.6ghz will do it in half the time, as for graphics cards I only found Pinnacle studio required one and it crashed all the time but that was few years ago, never bought it only tried a trial version, all the other programs I've used never seemed to mind about the graphics card in fact I only bought one to try out the Pinnacle studio and have switched it back to on board chip with no loss of speed or editing ability, I've found the Magix movie edit pro 17 plus is the best bang for the buck it will give as good a result as the top line editing programs including Premiere at a fraction of the price and is very stable. it handles mult core processors but as yet is only 32 bit, but 64 bit is backward compatible so no problem.

To be honest I'd suggest you save up for another £300-£600 before purchasing.

You could get yourself one of these if you want to stay in the mac family.
Refurbished Mac - Buy Refurbished Mac Products - Apple Store (UK)

£500 might not last you, £1000 is the sweet spot for purchasing a "good" editing system whether it's mac or windows, £500 is a huge compromise.

With software, it's an endless debate, I had a sales person claim ( Said sales person did not work at apple ) that only FCP-X could deliver the fastest editing platform for HD content, after I asked him to justify his statement the response I got was
"Because it's the best"

The beauty of this market is there are oh so many packages out there at different price ranges and most of them carry a free trial for you to download and play around with.

First off, decide if you want to go mac or PC, Don't let software rule your decision on that one.
Secondly, Download trials of the software available for your platform.
Thirdly, Decide which one allows you to achieve what you want to achieve, Not the one that people claim is the best.