Final Cut Express vs Premiere Elements

[laurakaye.livejournal.com]

So I've been wanting to get back into vidding for some time now, and now thanks to tax refund time, I have some money to spend to get some supplies. My main two needs are a nice big external hard drive and some editing software.

Background: I vidded on a PC using Adobe Premiere 6 in, like, the stone age. Now, I have a bright shiny iMac (the basic model, but upgraded to 2 gigs of RAM, running Leopard) and I want to make it my new vidding machine.

My question for you, Mac vidders, is this. Do I spend $100 on Premiere Elements or $300 on Final Cut Express? What does FCE have to justify the extra $200? I know FCP is supposed to be the Holy Grail of Video Editing, but I haven't heard as much about the little sister program.

I don't have any other multimedia stuff that didn't come with the Mac, but I do plan on getting Photoshop Elements as well.

Apologies if this has been covered already - I found plenty of stuff about both in the memories but didn't see any compare/contrasts.