This is what I get paid to do, so pardon the lack of details, lol 1 - set aside 1,000 of that to have someone build these for you 2 - plan for 5 systems 3 - Monitors should be 17 to 21 inch LCD secondary plus one 21 inch CRT for color correcting -- 4 total 4 - Use KVM's 5 - Buy 7 MB & CPU's, all identical (2 for spares) 6 - Load up all of the systems with RAM 7 - Set one system specifically up as a resource cow -- the place where all your content is stored. RAID format, preferably serial ATA (SCSI is also good) 8 - single OS across the board for the workstations, match it to a strong server back (XP & 2K3 are my suggestions) 9 - UPS the lot. 10 - Two workstations, 2 renderboxes, one system server/file server 11 - Upgrade your software packages and add aditional plugins -- possibly even add a second modelling package. I'd recommend Maya or Lightwave right now. 12 - Further suggestions: Vue, Carrara 3, Vegas Video, Sound Forge. 13 - have fun first, worry about everything else second.

thou and I, my friend, can, in the most flunkey world, make, each of us, one non-flunkey, one hero, if we like: that will be two heroes to begin with. (Carlyle)