Hardware for video editing...did they do me right?

Ok so my girlfriend is a film student and has decided she wants to be a video editor. She works on Final Cut Express and Final Cut Pro depending on if she is at home or school. Unfortunately only her laptop is capable of running express and her desktops cannot because they are old/lame. I am going to suprise her with a new desktop. My intention with this computer (besides to win points) is to let her have a computer that she can practice her video editing skills with and get a nice start in her career.

I called Apple and spoke with someone who seemingly knew what they were talking about and they convinced me to go with the following computer:

Proccesor 2.33GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 2GB 667 DDR2 SDRAM - 2x1GB
Hard Drive 250GB Serial ATA Drive
Graphics Memory 256MB VRAM
20" display
Drive: SuperDrive 8X (DVDR-DL/CD-RW)
Speakers ALTEC LANSING XT1
Some cannon printer they basically threw in
Wireless mouse and keyboard.

Does this sound like the computer I was looking for? Did I buy a lame computer? Did I get sold more than I needed?

It was 2500$ including the warranty and I'm getting 100$ back.

 

Seems to me, for the price, you could have purchased a PC with a faster CPU (like a 3.0 minimum, maybe 3.2 or 3.4), more RAM (2gb is good, but 4gb is better ), seperate video card (from your description, it sounds like the video is 'on board' versus a dedicated seperate video card: NVidia's GeForce 8800 series is tops!), and a bigger hard drive (like a 500gb, or 2x500gb in a striped RAID setup, so the PC sees the 2 drives as 1 HUGE hard drive), and a high speed DVD burner (you listed an 8x, the newest ones are 20x, and retail for under $70). In my humble opinion, I think you paid too much. Like, way too much. I'm sorry, I know that's not what you wanted to hear. The PC will probably function OK for what it will be doing, but the lack of a seperate video card worries me. For video editing, you should have as much graphics processing power as possible, and on board video is not the way to go. Honestly, if you had visited a small, independently owned PC shop, they would have custom built you a high end system geared for your particular needs. You'd know every part and brand name used, and you'd have local tech support (beats the hell out of calling India) and a name and face and handshake to go with the tech support. And you probably would have saved some valuable, hard earned green; and that hard earned green would have stayed in the local economy instead of going into some multi-national coproration's already bloated bank account. I'd best slow down here I'm getting carried away, but you get my point.....

hopperdave2000

 

To bad final cut is a mac only tool. No thats not to much for mac system either. Thats definitly not an on board video card either.

 

more responses?

 

Let me clear something up, Yes if you were buying a pc with those specs i would say you paid to much, simple fact is though that macs cost more, but have some high end apps that only can be used on them. You want final cut pro, your running a mac. Plain and simple.

 

looks good to me

DAMN macs are expensive! but it sounds like its your only choice

 

I am a PC guy but this is for my girlfriend who
1) is a apple girl
2) uses final cut which is only available on macs

Understanding that I really had no choice but to get a Mac and frankly, ignoring the price, are these specs good for video editing? We're not talking lord of the rings but for independent movies that kind of thing...

I should have clarified that in the beginning.

 

yes its good. do you have the model/name of the video card?

 

ATI Radeon X1600

With that screen size that was the best I could do-- I imagine these are replaceable though if it's not up to par.

 

id imagine that will do fine though im not too familiar with how cards perform with video editing. it would be considered a low-mid range gaming card so you should be fine. everything else is great