I have about 20 tapes to edit of home movies, and my old P3 isn't cutting it. So I am looking at a getting an intel imac as this seems to be a pretty good idea just for casual home movie editing using the ilife software bundle. Plus I will have a new computer to boot.
My question is would the new intel imacs be fast enough to run final cut studio if I ever want to upgade to this software?
The chip will be good enough, but most of the iMacs come with only 512MB of RAM, which is a little cramped for anything past iMovie. If you wanted to change software, you'd probably want to do a RAM upgrade, too.
My Mac recently kicked after years of fine service, but I loved the iLife suite. You can do a surprising amount of stuff with just iMovie, QTPro, and free add-ons you can download. iDVD could be better, but it still got the job done.
I think you will be surpised what the new iMacs are running like. I would get the RAM upgrade, but for what you are talking about doing, you will be more than happy with the machine. It will run FCP as well. It's always advised to have more RAM. No need to exceed 2 gigs for FCP though.
Thanks guys.
ttt
must have 2 gigs, don't need to exceed but you need atleast 2 for fcp