It is time to upgrade my daughter's 2009 Macbook Pro. She does not need the portability of a laptop as she uses her iPad for that. He home use is not that demanding, except that she loves to edit her diving and vacation movies. She could use a Mac mini, as she has a 23" monitor, apple keyboard, and apple mouse. However, I am not sure there is enough RAM and horsepower in a Mac mini, so I have been looking at iMacs as well.

My assumptions are she needs at least 16 GB of RAM and a quad core i7 for serious video editing (around an hour of 1080p 60 Hz. video when rendered). Which puts us up around $1400+. Are my assumptions correct, or off base? What should we be looking at?

She was a Linux user when she was younger, but then they grow up, go to college, get a job, get married, and think they know everything....;) (she ditched Linux in college)

Thanks!

Mark