Mac Forum / Applications / MS Office / December 2005

Assuming you are determined to get a laptop, for what you want to do, the PB
is the better way to go of the options you mentioned, 17" if you can. If
money is an issue, though, you would be better off with the 15" & put the
extra $ into RAM (1 GB absolute minimum, preferably max it to 2 GB). Plenty
of hard disk space is also desirable, but that can be added externally,,, In
fact, it would probably be better to do it that way (greater capacity
available, faster speed, less weight to carry unnecessarily).

Either unit comes with OX X, which includes iDVD. You can get more info on
it at the Apple web site. I don't use it, but I believe it will do
everything you mention.

You'll have to check your camera's user guide as to whether you can download
directly to the computer.

BTW - If this isn't intended as a Christmas purchase, you might want to wait
'til after the first of the year. Historically price drops take place then &
with the new Apple line of Intel-based systems due for release 2006 should
be no exception.

Good Luck |:>)

On 12/17/05 2:01 PM, in article
1134846117.420062.219220@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com,

For basic home video editing, you can't beat the combination of iMovie
and iDVD. You get both in the iLife 05 package for $79 (assuming you are
in the USA). Just plug in your camera with its firewire (i.link in Sony
speak) and away you go. There's a good tutorial for iMovie included. The
package comes bundled with a new Mac.

You don't say how fast your iBook is, but you will certainly find it a
little slow rendering the output of your editing. You will also need an
external DVD burner, and a program such as Toast that lets you burn a
DVD image (created by iDVD) to that external drive. But if you want to
try it out and see how you like it, this could be your cheapest solution.

If you are buying a new Mac laptop, get one with a dvd-burning
Superdrive. In my opinion the best value at present is the 14 inch
iBook. It's nearly as fast as the PowerBooks, and has the DVD burner.
its only serious disadvantage is that the screen is limited to 1024x768
resolution, even if you attach an external monitor. The PowerBooks have
bigger screens, and can output even higher resolution to a second
display (and can run two screens at once).

I've edited several movies on an iBook, and although more screen space
would be nice, it works just fine. I ended up buying a PowerBook myself,
nearly a year ago, but at that time the iBook was a far inferior
computer. Today's iBook has nearly caught up to the PowerBooks, and will
likely stay there until the new Intel-based PowerBooks come out sometime
in 2006.