I'd like to add the following addendum to Equipment for Everyone by Joe McCleskey March, 2004:
Joe Visionary, not fettered by the "conventional wisdom" monophonic thinking that "pro" automatically means MAC and Final Cut Pro, and open-minded enough to recognize that Sony Picture Vegas is quite a bit more than simply "a tool for corporate training videos", invests $1600 in a dual-processor PC, installs Vegas ($549), which is immediately usable, doesn't have to waste money on hardware cards for superior 'real-time' previewing, (and laughs all the way to the bank), while the 'pros' are still wading through the FCP 1000-page manual and fretting about the $4000 on their credit card.
I guess this wouldn't get past the copy editors. Oh well :-)