its not important to make great effects, its important that the scenes fits.
ok with this system it is not really possible to work with after effects.
i think the best would be if you can get a better pc. with more ram and more hdd, because 40 are not much, i would have problems
It's not that hard. I have a 512 MB DDR RAM 80 GIG PC, and I don't have any problems at all running AE. I do the majority of my editing in Vegas, and I rarely use AE, but the point remains, that it's not really important to use effects. Yeah, it's great to use them, but JUST using them isn't enough. You have to use them in the right context and know when to and when not to use them. It's really all about scene selection.