i am finally going to buy the new powerbook to run along with my canon xl1s.am i wise /anyone any comments good or bad.
I too would be very interested to hear your coments, as I am looking for a laptop - and this one appears to have almost everything.
I have previously only worked on PCs so dont know what the learning curve is for the ibooks. Also would be interested to hear what the Mac software is like, and what present PC programs would work with Macs.
Mike
New 17" Powerbook is simply the best laptop in the world, no shut up it just is, give one a go and you will see what I mean.
I was playing with a demo model at my local Apple dealer the other day and they had to kick me out of the shop at closing, just coudn't get over the intelegent fiber optic keyboard light thing, kept getting the salesman to dim the lights, then turn them up again.
But seriously, this is the most impressive peice of kit I have ever come across in every single way, design, functionability, OS, software, you name it.
For the record I am a recent Mac convert (10 months ago), before I was using PC's from version 3.1 of Windows with Premier and Media Studio Pro. I bought an Apple G4 933 with Superdrive and Final Cut Pro/DVD Studio Pro and Adobe After FX production bundle, though the latter was a waist of time as Final Cut Pro does virtually everything that After FX does anyway, especialls as FCP takes After FX plugins.
Apples OS and software is by far the easiest to use, FCP is (in my oppinion) much easier to use than Premiere and Apples software is much more stable, again in my opinion.
Every major programme you can get for the PC, you can get for Mac OSX. All the Adobe programmes like Photoshop/Premier/After FX etc, Quark, Microsoft Word (Office X) in fact Microsoft Word came out on the Mac platform long before it ever reached the Windows platform, same goes for Photoshop/Quark and most of the other biggies.
There are very few programmes that you can't get for the Mac that you can get for Windows and to be honest the ones you can't get probably aren't worth bothering with anyway.
Windows is a free-for-all open licence platform, so anyone can right drivers etc, which is why there are so many graphics cards/DV cards etc for Windows as those same companies would have to pay Apple around $50,000 just to say hello, then Apple would come and crawl all over their factory with a fine tooth comb and a pair of Marrygolds to make sure they are doing things to Apples fastidious standards.
This is why Microsoft Word will hardly ever crash on a Mac, but it will crash every week in an office envoronment, because if it's for Mac, the developers have to take more care because it cost them and if they don't do things Apples way (like put the Quit button as the last thing in the file menu) they will chuck it back at them until they get it right.
You only have to learn the keyboard shorcuts once with the Apple OS, it will be Command S for Save in every single programme made for the Mac, no matter who makes it, these are the rules Apple lay out to third partys.
If there is that odd little programme that you just can't live without then you can always buy Virtual PC for Mac OSX (£145) in Windows 95/98/XP/2000 and NT versions.
I read a review a couple of months ago benchtesting Microsoft Office on a Dell PC running Windows 2000 and an iMac running Virtual PC (Windows 2000) also running Microsoft Office and the Mac ran Windows more efficiently than a, well Windows (Dell) PC.
One of the best sensations in the world (apart from sex and the smell of a new car) is when you phone a Windows user 8 weeks after he/she just bought their first Mac.
You have to take the plunge and buy a Mac to understand our community, only then will you ever understand why we are called Mac enthusiasts and Windows users are called, well Windows users, because we are very enthusiastic about our Macs, we love using them.
Wow, hope I didn't go too far off track here?
He's only jealuous. Like me.
I have the last model Powerbook, and they are good. I only had it three months and they've already brought out new models 
They run FCP etc no problems, and daisychain firewire drives no problem.
Vinod