Video Editing on G4 iBook (800 MHz)

Heya All, Nice forum, been lots of help reading all the posts so far. However I have a question which I haven't come accross as of yet.

I am wondering on the ability of the iBook specifically the 800MHz version. I am a college student and plan on doing some editing for fun, because my girlfriend and I have a firewire capable JVC video camera and have been travelling a lot. I would like to edit the footage on the laptop and than transfer it to a friends computer ready to burn on DVD (he has a G5).

I note that I am a college kid because I plan on getting the college edition 800MHz iBook, for $949. This has only 128mb ram, but I will get the 512mb upgrade stick, for a total of 640MB ram.

Will the power of this computer be enough to handle my video editing needs? I don't need professional quality, but wouldn't want to spend $1050 on a computer for the quality to not be decent. Will it run too slow to use, or will the difference (between say a 900 iBook or a Power Book) be negligble.

I can't really afford a Power Book, so its the iBook or nothing. But please be honest with me, if you do not think the iBook is up to the job, please say so. Anyone have some real info comparisons between the iBook models? the 933 and 1GHz? I guess I can save up for another 2 months for a powerbook if absolutely necessairy.

Thanks a lot !
CA

edit: I forgot to add that I will also upgrade the HD to 60 GB through Apple, but the Ram will probably be purchased seperatly because of cost savings

You can use an iBook and iMovie to edit your movies, with no problem.

I am also planning on getting an ibook and was wondering this same thing. Obviously it would be able to edit, it's just how fast will it run, deffinetely not as fast as my Dual 1Ghz G4 at home, but it's also (I won't do the match on this one) bigger than the little 12 inch iBook. So can't really complain too much for me atleast, but I suppose the answer would be, depending on how fast it will render your edits if you can be patient and realize it isn't a Dual 2Ghz G5 speed demon, then it can.

Mafan100 said:

I am also planning on getting an ibook and was wondering this same thing. Obviously it would be able to edit, it's just how fast will it run, deffinetely not as fast as my Dual 1Ghz G4 at home, but it's also (I won't do the match on this one) bigger than the little 12 inch iBook. So can't really complain too much for me atleast, but I suppose the answer would be, depending on how fast it will render your edits if you can be patient and realize it isn't a Dual 2Ghz G5 speed demon, then it can.

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I edit on my G3/500 iBook, it's not that bad, but I had a MAJOR speed boost by adding a firewire external hard drive. The speed of the iBook internal hard drive is miserable, trust me on this, it seems to be the bottleneck. Ever since I added the external drive, my editing is much faster because I can scan through captured footage extremely fast now. THe rendering speed is not that good because I'm running a 500, but other than that, it's just fine.