In my opinion, computers are upgraded like every 6-18 months. If you fork over 5000 dollars it will become obsolete within a few years. Why not get a reasonable priced computer and upgrade as you go as new components come along. I do have to say that animators are doing far more then you think on less. If you haven't yet looked at Rustboy.com, you should. He used a Mac and a few other things to create this awesome animation, just to show you don't need a expensive machine to do "Oscar Award" like filming. I think if you know your way around the software and are extremely creative, this goes a long way then forking out hundreds and hundreds of dollars. You can get a great machine that can do all that you need it for, for far less. Many of the applications won't even take advantage of this speed anyway for awhile. So many applications will simply be playing catch-up.