OK. Let's talk about the system requirements that your computer also known as a rig should have to run After Effects CS3, efficiently. We'll start off with the Macintosh platform and then I'll talk about the Windows PC platform. In a separate movie I'm going to talk about the kind of RAM or rather the amount of RAM and the amount of RAM on your video card, you should have to run After Effects efficiently. Because After Effects is a very RAM hungry application, just like it's sibling Photoshop. So having sad that, on a Macintosh platform you're going to want to have a power PC, minimum G4 or G5 multi-core Intel Processor. In my case I'm using a Mac Pro quad core with a ATI 1900 card in it, so its pretty powerful, although the fan does come on when things get pretty heavy with the particulars and everything, it is able to handle After Effects with pretty much no problem at all. So you want to get the most recent system you can if you are really going to use After Effects quite a bit. So let's talk about the operating system for the Mac, once again you're going to want to have a Mac OS X and the minimum version 10.4.9. You are going to want to have a minimum of 1 gigabyte of RAM for DV, to get a bunch of RAM for HDV and HD. As far as installing the optional content you're going to want to have 2 Gigabytes of space because when you buy After Effects it does come with a lot of cool things, presets and all kinds of stuff and to install everything your going to want to have a minimum of 3 gigabytes of space for all of that magic. Now of course your going to want to have even more space because when your working with video and special effects and all that kinds of stuff and eventually you will output the QuickTime or some other format and import video to bring into After Effects your going to want to have a lot of space coming over. Fortunately computers today have a ton of hard drive space so that should not be an issue, if it is an issue just buy another hard drive, their very inexpensive these days, you can buy an internal hard drive, and external hard drive that's easy to plug in and just store all your files in there. Although I will stress that its better to work on your main drive when your working with video so, you might want to transfer some of your older files to the other hard drive and use your main hard drive for your video work. Now as far as your monitor, you're going to want to have a 1024 X 758 resolution with a 32 bit video card and Adobe is going to recommend a graphics card for GPU accelerated playback. You're going to want open GL support, so make sure you have a video card that has an open GL 2.2 card and they recommend in video, although ID use ATI. You are going to want to have a DVD RAM to install of course. You're going to want to have QuickTime 7.1.5 to use the QuickTime features and if you are going to use the bridge and your going to surf the web to find content of course your going to have to have a live Internet connection, broadband recommended. Now let's talk about the Windows platform. You'll find that almost every single thing is the same except of course you're going to want to have an Intel Pentium 4, an Intel Centurion an Intel Zion or an Intel core duo or compatible processor. For your operating system you're going to want to run Microsoft Windows XP with service pack 2 or Windows Vista, home business, home premium, ultimate or Enterprise certified for 32 bit editions. All of the other features that I mentioned for the Macintosh or the same exact requirements for the windows platform, once again your going to want a very powerful machine, especially if your going to incorporate After Effects into your workflow. It is required of course that you have a very good video card because After Effects unlike a lot of other applications not only is Ram hungry but also is video card processor hungry. So make sure you get a nice video card, talk to your favorite reseller or anybody at like a video store or a computer store who knows about a special effects software and ask them what video card they will recommend that you use to run After Effects efficiently. Once again I'm using the word efficiently because it will work for you, but if you want to take advantage of seeing everything in real time and seeing the particulars happening in real time then a good video card is going to be something that you're going to want to get.