I’m sorry to say that your senior member is having a senior moment. He cannot seriously be considering a mini. That would be great if you are using iMovie and in high school. MSU! Come on! If you are shooting DV an iMac would get you by for a few years. If you are trying to go five you should consider a Mac Pro Quad (there are no G5’s anymore) with 4 gigs RAM, try and fill out the HD bays with 500 gig hard drives for media. And then you will upgrade to FCS2. Just my thoughts.