Lately this editor is looking more and more at needing a better computer for specialized renderings.
I just recently found out how week the computer sold in the consumer market really are for doing anykind of serious art, animations, 3D mapping, 3Dobjects and effects. I use a dell dimension 8000 that's been fitted with an extra 3 gigs of ram and a video card that claims to handle all visual aspects of my computing experience. I thought that would be what the doctor ordered but as it turned out it was fine for playing video games online and the such but it wasn't much of anything for doing actual work in the creation of any type of serious media. it did OK for video editing  but when it came down to the use of real 3D objects in the creation of any length in animation it came to an almost stand still.
So..
I started studying the various types of computers that are in the world and it turns out the type of computer that's really used for serious productions of media are what they call work station comps with a add on rendering farm of any size. they arnt as expensive most are under 4000 in price and that's talking about the real bad ass comps the good ones go for around 2 grand which can give you a computer that has anywhere between  16 to 48 core processors as compared to the hyped up cheap stuff with the BIG BAD dual core processor IOU ahhhhh right? that's the stuff they piratically spoon feed the American public when they are really just selling really cheap comps that perform to what looks like to an uneducated public really well. when infact they are Meir toys compared to real computers. with to days advancements in computing . A good work station computer has the oS like any normal comp sold at best buy but it has it's own set of allocated and separable rams of up to in a single unit of 98 gigs and in the rendering farms that you can use a ram managing software alone with project softwares you use with your art or animation where the project can be split into small segments and rendered by separable processes with the cores of the processing department of the comp.meaning the project that would take a sing dual core computer say a week to do could be broken down into separate peaces with each peace being assigned to it's own core and with a blazing data transfer of up to 26 gigs of data transfer that same project could be rendered in say 30 minutes!! and with an add on rendering farm (for real serious artest) much more faster almost in real time maybe.
sooo.. if you like to play other peoples worlds of art in games the little liquid cooled nitro charged computer made by dell  lol whats the name -um xps? maybe was going for 5 grand when it first came out HA HA do you know what kind of real computer you could get for that PRICE HA HA! unbelievable!! now they have this comp called ALIEN WARE !!  look out for that one it might render a ten second animation in almost a couple of days LOL!
bottom line folks is the comps you see in the American retail stores are just about as powerful as a playstation 3 lol.
research multi cored work stations and rendering farms type in 48 core work station into google and take a long look folks at the truth!!
microsoft needs to quit trying to jip the American public with crappy comps and overabundance of stupid Anti virus software which only fights the viruses the companies that make the software put out into the internet to make sure they have a security problem industry for job security.
mark my WORDS!!
the computers I tell you about here will probity be outlawed by our governments to restrict creative productions which lead to money and power in there minds.
when it really leads to the betterment of man if you can get over the money greed thing.