Which laptop or desktop to buy for video editing

[Jim Uran]

Looking to start getting into some different video editing programs, I was told Sony Vegas Movie Studio was a good one to get started in...

I'm buying either a laptop or a desktop, and not sure which to get and what exactly to look for for my desired use of the darn thing.

Would like to limit my spending to $500-$600 for the computer.

Any suggestions on what I should be looking for?

[Farley]

I'm in the same boat, I went to best buy last friday and checked out some laptops and they did have some deals that werent on their HSOforum, but the one I decided on, after about 30 minutes of pacing\checking out other computers\checking out system req's for software\etc... I told them I'll take this one...."Oh sorry we dont have that one in stock"....

I think you're going to want 8GB memory and a decent video card will help a lot. As far as processors, I dont know much about them, I'm trying to get at least an i5 but hoping to find a i7. Dont know how well AMD compares to intel, in fact thats why it took me so long to decide on Friday, that computer had a AMD processor. If you just need the tower, you should be able to find that in your price range but if you're looknig for the whole package you might be streaching that $600 mark.

[DTro]

Well if you want a dedicated video processing machine, spend your full budget.

I bought an entry level "web browser" laptop (approx $299) and a 5 minute video in 720p takes about 2.5-3hrs to process and upload.

With a good machine I bet I could do that in about 30min.

[Jim Uran]

I saw a pretty decent one at "wally world"

It's an acer, it has the intel i5 processor, 6GB of RAM, and 500GB of Hard drive space! Looks like it should do what I need it to! I may be purchasing up this Thursday. $475 isnt a bad price. With the money I save, I can buy 125 double cheeseburgers at Micky D's on the way home.

[MuleShack]

Another thing to look for is if the unit has USB 3.0 Not sure if that is standard on all pc's and laptops or not. It will transfer the data from the camera faster than a 2.0 will.

Look to see how fast the data transfer is on the motherboard also. Some hard drives are hooked up using 3mbps connection and others are 6mbps. The 6 is going to process more video faster than a 3mbps will.

On the PC that I build, there were 2 or 3 slots to hook up hard drive with 6mbps and a few more with 3mbps. Mine sure processes it faster than my 4 year old laptop does.

[Whoaru99]

Don't know if USB 3 is standard yet but on my laptop two out of six(?) are USB 3 ports. Unfortunately, I don't yet have any USB 3 devices to see how they actually work in terms of speed. Backwards compatible speed seems same as the non-USB 3.