Okies, now that I'm paying attention: Your "student-software-using-friend" should not fret so much about a killer 64bit platform. Yeah, it's cool and unlocks extra highways and biways for your applications to run through, but you can make do with a simpler system... especially if your making do with student software. Most newer systems come with a 64bit chip, so thats not all that uncommon today. The problem is they stiff you when it comes to the 32bit OS they sling which basically "nerfs" your system. Just read the minimum requirements for Revit on the Autodesk site, take it with a grain of salt, and check out what people are getting by with on the techy forums. You can build some thing based around an 8000 to 9000-ish series EVGA video card and 2 to 4 gigs of ddr2 ram. Get an ugly Cooler Master case and a run Cooler Master power supply. This brand will give you some longevity. Run an ASUS board that will accept these components and Vista. Get an inexpensive Westell HDD thats 200gig (plus or minus 50gigs). Read the reviews (like on newegg.com) and get the one that sells a lot and gets good reviews. Some people like to pack a box load of these in small production servers because they are so cheap but dependable. I run these items not to be a brand toting name dropper, but because they are economical and NOT CRAP. Additionaly, the ASUS board is super builder friendly and is good on the resources (ie: not just conservative but more intelligently built.) I have been working hard at porting Revit into linux and its really ugly. The best you can do is port Windows into linux, and then run Revit in the guest Windows OS. All your doing then is gobbling serious amounts of reasources. The only time I would suggest this is if you have a version of 32bit Windows your working with and you refuse to work completely out of Windows. In this senario, the 32 bit already puts a cap on your resources so even if you had 6 gigs of ram, your not going to be using it all for Revit anyway so you can spare some on another host OS. Hope this at least encourages you to try an economical build anyway. FYI, I'm getting by with an older Acer Extensa 4420 laptop that is all stock from the local office supply store. For about $400 to $500, I have a system thats good enough to piddle with my Revit projects when I'm away from the office. <qab>
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qab
^_^
Debian + VirtualBox + Revit
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