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I have some questions and need buying advice

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Well I'm new obviously and just came across this concept and site recently. Im thinking about diving in but have some questions. I used to build pcs when I was younger for gaming but switched over to Macs when I went to school for graphic design. I had an old IMac that got me through school but it didn't survive a recent move to Florida. I have all my music, photos, school and portfolio projects on a time machine backup on an external hard drive. I also already have the retail box version of snow leopard (used on my old iMac), as well as my retail box of adobe CS4 (Mac only). If it wasn't for CS4 being the Mac edition, my fondness for OSX, and my time machine backup, I would simply build a pc on my small budget. Im currentlon typing all this on an iPad 2. So, finally, here are my questions:

1. Is my current boxed copy of Snow Leopard still ok to use if I already used it to installed it on my old iMac? ($30 bucks isn't much if I need to buy it again, but I was just curious)

2. I'm ok with installing hardware, but the bios tweaking associated with this process is freaking me out. Is this something I'd have to get used too if I went down this path? After the initial build and install is done and osx is up and running, will osx perform system updates like a normal Mac without me having to go in and tweak or patch bios?

3. Any forseeable problems regarding my time machine backup and adobe software?

4. To all the experts, if you had only $850 to throw into this, what parts would you buy? I've read numerous guides and parts list already, I'm going in circles it seems. I would love something that is "future proof" (haha yeah right :p) and has room to grow. Sandy bridge seems like the hot new girl in town, which makes a lot of the guides from 5 or 6 months ago seem like a bad investment parts wise. Maybe I'm seeing this wrong on my budget haha ... Anyways, budget doesn't include an Antec 300 case or a monitor I've already picked out. Looking for a best bang for my buck with room to expand on the upgrade roadmap. I'll be using this for adobe CS4, light video editing (really just getting into it), andlight video gaming (valve source games and eventually Diablo 3 whenever that comes out).

Anyways, the novel is done. Thanks for your time and any insight.
 
Thanks for the insight ... It does eat up a big chunk of the budget tho. I go back and forth weather to just go for the low end budget guide tonymac posted back in feb and just upgrade a few of the key parts or focus more of the sandy bridge. Do you guys think the next budget guides tonymac does will involve sandy bridge?
 
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