Re: So who is the best candidate?

I own both CS 5.5 and Media Composer 5.5.

This year alone (before this FCPX issue) I considered both of them my favorite, but for different reasons.

If you do a lot of smaller projects (commercials, generally anything under 20 minutes) then Premiere Pro is probably your best bet -- because those projects tend to be short turn-around and heavier on graphics. As a sandbox editor (something you just mess/playing around in) it's more fun than AVID. However...

I know that a previous poster said they liked Adobe for their metadata -- but I'm sorry to disagree and share that I actually ended up preferred AVID for metadata-sake.

And even more funny... AVID's biggest 'feature' that wins over myself and my clients is the AVID timecode generator: able to show filenames of video and audio clips on screen and a whack load of other features beyond just showing timecode. This feature has always carried some nerdy humor for me because AVID invended this generator what..like 10 years ago? I bet not even AVID knows the money they've made from that small feature... gets'em every time...