Computer Illiterate Student Looking For Help with Macs

[PEDXING]

Hi all,

I'm hoping to buy a mac relatively soon and I have some questions I'm hoping you guys can help me out with.

First of all, I'm definitely going to get a mac. I am completely computer illiterate but don't take that as an invitation to convince me I should go PC. I have nothing at all whatsoever against PC's, I'm just more comfortable working with Macs as thats what we have at school. (Brooks Institute of Photography-Film Program, if anyone was interested)

Anyways, I'm torn on what to get. I have a 46 inch Sharp Aquos so my initial plan was to get a Mac Mini and hook it up to that. I figured a decent little desktop with a decent 46 in monitor would be pretty cool and great for video editing and what not.

I'm now currently in an After Effects class and have been learning that program as well as Photoshop and so on. My first question is:

Is a Mac Mini substantial enough in it's strongest configuration to run those programs efficiently?

By those programs I mean After Effects, Final Cut, Photoshop etc... and to run some of those programs simultaneously.

My concern is I'll go with the Mac Mini and it'll get bogged down sooner than later and I'll wanna shoot myself every time I try to render something. I intend to buy a 1 TB External immediately and save everything to that anyways, but still.

With this concern I started looking at the iMacs which can have substantially more power and memory, but I don't know how much is necessary to do what I want to do. For example, is it worth it to spend an extra $900 on the 8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM (which by the way I have no idea what that means)?

I know how to use these programs, I just don't know the hardware well enough to know what is appropriate for running them. One more simple question; do iMacs have any kind of video out like the Mac Minis? It would be amazing if I could do some kind of dual screen set up with the iMac itself as well as my Aquos.

Anyways, I apologize profusely for the length and ignorance of my post but I thank everyone in advance for taking to the time to read it and help me out. Thank you so very much and I look forward to anyone's replies.