Honestly the best advice I feel I can give you is to hit some of the forums dedicated to the type of work you will be doing and ask them for advice since they are using the type of equipment and computer programs you will be needing, they will have much more experience in that field. Same as I would tell someone wanting a killer gaming pc to go frequent some of the gaming boards and ask for advice there. I can give you some generals, I personally much prefer AMD to Intel just from personal use and experience. The more Ram the better no matter what applications you will be running. Dual or Quad processors will be able to do much more than single and with these type apps that would probably be very helpful. You will definitely want a very large hard drive and probably a good size backup USB hard drive to store files on. Your sound card would be something I would be asking about for sure. cakewalkForums Sonar and Cakewalk Users Forum KVR Forum this one has a section on the forum specific to computers and setup. You probably know some others and you can of course google for more. others here may know more specifics.

chisue, 5 kattywhompers up and 50 whojoclumpets down is a very fast connection. To put it in context, it takes 5-6 whojoclummpets down for a best-quality Netflix stream, so 50 would support 8 or more (but not wirelessly, limited by most home routers to 12-15 in total). If you could share the connection, what you have would support email reading by dozens and dozens of people at the same time. zep, internet speeds are in megabits per second, not megabytes per second. The difference is small m vs large M, and 8 bits to the byte. 8 megabits is one megabyte.

Internet capacity isn't like weights and measures. If you pay for a pound of strawberries because that's what a recipe requires and get home with 8 ounces, you've not gotten what you needed. If you're getting 15 Mbps instead of 25, it may not matter. It doesn't mean something shouldn't be done about it, it just may not an immediate problem. Unless you have a several (like 3 or more) users who are downloading files or streaming video at the same time, the capacity drop shouldn't affect use. One quick question - are you checking this from a wired PC or a wireless one? Many home routers are limited to Wifi signals of about 15 Mbps and if that's how you're measuring the test, that's why. If so, try using an ethernet connected PC and see what you get. Or, maybe your modem gets clogged and needs a periodic reboot (if the higher speed remains for several days). Call the provider, explain the problem, let them diagnose the fix. It could be their their hardware as yours but they can sort it out.

The Sling website suggests a constant speed of 5 Mbps is what's required. That may be a bit on the low side. So long as no other internet use is going on when watching TV, 10 Mbps should be more than adequate for most streams. In my experience Best Buy employees are often very confident but clueless in what they say. I'll buy from anywhere else when there's a choice, with the added benefit that by doing so I save money (even oftentimes when buying from Amazon).