Hey, I need some purchase advice from the Mac Powers That Be. Here's my current setup: 12inch iBook G4 1.25ghz, 768 MB RAM, 30 gig drive. Connected to external removable drive system. 19inch widesreen LCD. Final Cut Express. Pretty pathetic setup, as I'm currently using this as my primary edit station, instead of the dual core Pentium PC sitting next to it. I'm trying to keep the cost way down, as I still have to buy a car (a teenager's gotta drive..:P)
Not pathetic, just not as flashy as you'd like... Sell the PC lappie while it's still worth something, buy a cheap car, and save, save, save (or borrow, borrow, borrow )

Now, I've got a number of options as far as an upgrade: 1) G5 1.8Ghz Tower- about $1100 on ebay. Pros: Can run motion, when I eventually purchase Final Cut Studio Cons: Slow, not portable
A single 1.8GHz G5 isn't your best value at this point.

2) MacBook 1.83Ghz Core Duo- about $1,100 Pros: Portable, Fast, Applecare Cons: One Firewire Port, not a desktop, (?) can't run motion (?) I plan on selling my iBook G4, especially if I go with the G5 tower. As far as software goes, I'll most likely be sticking with FCE for a little while longer.
The MacBook is pretty fast, but will suffer (compared to the MacBook Pro) in video performance. I'm not even sure Motion is supported on this machine.

Unless you're getting very advanced in a hurry, FCE will give you everything you need. In looking at a G5 Tower, remember that there are a lot of adders to make up a "healthy" FCP workstation. These include RAM, additional disks, monitors, graphics upgrade, etc. Any of the current PowerMac line-up will make a nice base, but expect to be in at least $3-4K for the hardware. In your shoes, a MacBook Pro would be a good choice if you could afford it (probable total cost $3K), second the MacBook.

One option would be to buy the MacBook now as a temporary solution, then sell it once the Intel Powermacs are released, and grab a dual g5 tower and Final Cut Studio. Right now, I'm more inclined to go with that option, considering these benchmarks: http://www.macintouch.com/...lreports/perfpack02/

The "Intel PowerMacs" should be announced before year end and should be awesome. Your options at that point will be to sell the car and load up on state-of-the-art editing gear (it won't be cheap) or buy up a complete G5 workstation at what will probably be a hefty discount. The thing to keep in mind is that any PowerMac solution is (generally) going to be higher in cost and capability, so you need to decide how much power you really need.

I think a portable editing system is over-rated especially for on-the-go editing. The battery life of laptops just isn't long enough for editing. (around 2.0 - 2.5 hours)