On one hand, one hardly finds comparisons done by PC users. Seems only Mac users are interested in such comparisons (mostly). The problem is that the tendency of these articles is cynical and biased. So there isn't much in terms of objectivity.

I have been fortunate enough to be able to work with Mac, PC, Sun and SGI computers. They are all good for different things, and most of the time they can all do well in many tasks.

With respect to video editing... I think the PC sales representative contacted in this article was probably not very useful.

Last year (2004) I made a 40 min movie that was an official selection of a couple Film Festivals. It was done with a prosumer DV camera, and edited on a PC. Now, my PC is not even comparable with the one mentioned in the article. This is a 5 yr old Pentium II, 450Mhz computer with 384Mb. For $30 I added a firewire card, and for $100 a 120Gb external HD. I edited, color corrected, added SFX, on this old PC.

I also used a 3-4 yr old Laptop. Sony Vaio PGR-33 (or something like that). It is slightly smaller than the 12" ibook, and has integrated Firewire. It runs on a 600Mhz Celeron and has 128Mb or RAM. And it was perfectly capable of capturing and editing video. Oh, and it cost $999 at Fry's Electronics (back then).

So I am convinced that any PC that can be purchased in the present time (2005) is more than capable of editing video (my 1999&2001 computers clearly were).

I wish computer users were not so much like cult activists and were open to the possibliity that Macs, PCs, SUNs, and SGIs can all be good computers with strong and weak points.

So... does anyone know of an objective comparison of processors?