The difficult thing about mac is that a raid card costs $800 while for a HP workstation the comparable raid card is only $19 (how can this actually be true???)

Also, every workstation (that I've seen) is packaged with ECC memory which is much more expensive than non-ECC and usually runs at a slower bus speed (667 vs 800). I'm not sure if ECC memory is even advantageous and may be a negative thing (I\'ve seen what I call hiccups in my editing program after I installed ECC memory in my present computer. I could be wrong about this but I\'ve heard that when the memory checks itself there can be that "hiccup" created in the data flow.

I wish there was a sticky, blog, or website which compared various systems and workstations and described the limits and advantages for the editing world. Anyone seen such a beast?

$19 for them to configure a hardware raid, you don\'t want this. You want a physical controller separate from you mobo. You should really build this your self, whether you go mac or PC. Funny thing, all of the xeon workstations out there have about the same hardware layout. It all comes down to what apps you\'d like to run and the best machine that fits your budget and needs. If you like and know PCs, then stick with vegas or move to premiere and pick your workstation based on that.