Most anything I would say has been covered for the most part. I do have to agree you are probably overshooting what you need for a first Mac. Back when I made the switch, I bought a used iMac to play with. Sold it off and bought a used G4 Cube. It was only after about 2 years of using OS X that I felt it was necessary to buy a new machine.

As far as the hackintosh side, I personally wouldn't trust any hackintosh for much of anything. I've tinkered with it a bit out of curiosity, seen friends do it, and seen shiny hacks wrapped up into a package like EFiX, and just am not convinced it's stable. Stare at it the wrong way, and some ktext (driver) goes south, or a patch blows it all up. And you will want to patch the machine. 10.5.6 is required for iLife 09 for example. Do you really want to have to wait for some hacker somewhere to release a new patch to unscrew your box and allow an install of newer video editing software? A hackintosh may look like a mac, and act like a mac sometimes, but the experience is very different.

Check eBay, craigslist, or even Apple refurb sales if you want something mostly new but not something with this so called "Apple Tax" on it. And as others have said, don't pay Apple money for RAM or HDD upgrades.