While a MAC is certianly a good machine, I would go with a solid PC, Something with a dual core, a gig or more of ram and a 100 gig or better SATA drive, the larger the videos the larger your Hard Drive will need to be. Buy as much Processor,ram and harddrive as you can afford. I have been runing vista since it's RC1 release and I think you will be pleasantly surprised!! Things are much smoother, especially in the areas you are talking about. A good program to edit your videos is a program called Vegas. It will produce quality results for you. Hope this helps. Andy