Some universities offer programs to their students for free. The tuition pays for the program. My university only has Final Cut Xpress.

I understand your point. I didn't mean getting a ripped version, just something that I didn't have to go into debt over. Like some people share computer games I just don't know anyone who has Vegas. I'll just buy it.

If you are a student, Vegas, Avid, Premiere, all have student versions. You might look into that.

will I be disadvantaged by a student version in anyway?

Depends on the application. In Vegas... no. In Avid, yes.

Hey Terry, sorry to jump back in so late, but in regard to the system HDD, Harm put it better than I did... even if there's not a lot on your system drive, there's a lot of activity going on during the editing, so while size isn't critical, I think speed is. Looks like the choice you made is a good one.

Although in other threads Harm has warned against Green drives. I assume this may have something to do with spin-down during power-saving operations, possibly making the drive too slow to respond when needed.

Caviar Green is a bad choice for an editing system, too slow because of the 5400 RPM. Change that to a Caviar Black.

Ok I will change to the black.

About the Mother board, its "open box" should I trust that or pay the extra $50 bucks to get one from tigerdirect?

It's subjective, how fast you need it to encoding and the type of work but for simple editing the answer is yes even for HD. You could add 2gb ram if the mobo allows, 32bit operating sys can only use 3.5gb.

two 1tb 7200rpm drives are sufficient, no raids needed.

I use single 19 Samsung, larger monitors are nice but if you're trying to save money two smaller monitors give more real estate for the buck. What is large enough is also subjective, number of ppl here edit on laptops.

I think you made a mistake trying to save money by getting a used computer, for a little extra you could have gotten a new entry level multicore computer. But thats water under the bridge, your system is sufficient for video editing so just move forward with what you have you can always upgrade later.