- Hard drive speed honestly doesn't matter with video editing. I'm fairly certain all of my drives are 5,000 RPM, and I edit things for my Edit I class and for Directing III students all the time.

- I'd go with 3 GB of RAM. I'm sure some will disagree with me and say 2 is enough, but RAM isn't terribly expensive, and the more the better. The problem is that Premiere CS4 (at least on a Mac) can't read more than 3 GB, if I remember correctly.

- Laptops are just fine - I use a MacBook Pro myself. I've been told that to get a comparable experience from a laptop and a desktop, the specs on the laptop should exceed those of the desktop, but I think that's bullshit myself.

- Are you looking at a Mac or a PC?