In reply to balmybaldwin:
the windows experience index displays the lowest result
my CPU / ram and HD are in the 7's on my home PC and 5 > 6's on my work box
it's the aero experience that's knocking the score down on both machines which isn't of any real worry
if you wanted to make your machine run super fast i'm going to suggest
buy a small SSD from crucial or similar.
use that as your OS and Apps drive
use your exisiting spinny hard drive as your data drive (you can move the "users" folder on the c: drive to the second disk quite easily, google will show you how)
on the SSD install windows 7, MS security essentials and all the updates and your playback and editing software and try it again.
however
our machines (because mine is quite old too) are getting a bit slow for the output rendering part to be super snappy. if you have budget available for a newer machine or upgrading a fair amount of it, then that's another option too!
also check your email