A "little engine that could just make it" doesn't mean you'll be able to edit very well with it. AVCHD takes a LOT of computer horsepower and quite a few of us who thought having a quad core would insure we could handle it smoothly have found out otherwise.

While your machine seems to meet Elements 7 minimum requirements that just means you'll probably be able to import the media, drop it on the timeline, and MAYBE be able to do something with it there if you are exceedingly patient.

I edit 1920x1080 17Mbps AVCHD on a machine with Intel Q6600 (quad core) 2.4Ghz processor, 4GB RAM, and an Nvidia 8800GT 512MB graphics card. Primary software is Pinnacle Studio 12 Ultimate and Pinnacle says a quad core 2.66Ghz is minimum so I'm a bit under spec on that.

As long as I keep it simple and don't ask for too much processing on the second video track, AND exercise a lot of patience waiting for each clip to be processed before going on to the next one it goes OK. Although longest timeline I've done so far is 26 minutes.

Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra does a little better, things go smoother but there are a couple of things that are not quite so intuitive as Pinnacle Studio but it is a bit less demanding of computer resources.

The folks finding a relatively smooth go of editing AVCHD are using quad core 2.8 or 3.0 Ghz processor based machines.

But the advice to download trial versions and see what works is very good. Elements 7 or Vegas Platinum may turn out to not be so processor demanding as the ones I use. Good luck.

I think you should have a look at "Edius NEO."

It is cheap and it is also very good. You can have the same layout as FCP if you want.
You can usually find good deals on EBAY

Here is a link EDIUS Neo NLE Software

Cheers

Hans

+1

Its very intuitive and DVD Architect comes with the bundle so it also offers a nice solution for burning DVD's