ilife 11 or latest iPhoto/imovie?

Hello,
iv finally gone ahead and got a new (second hand iMac) and its time to place my old ibook g4 into a corner to gather dust.

Apart from the obvious advantages of it being a faster/newer machine (in fact if i had a machine wired up to a hamster wheel it would actually appear fast in comparison to my ibook!) i mainly got it to use to store my pictures and edit my movies- (mini dv set up)

I didn't realise it did not come supplied with ilife but thats not the end of the world. The main question is.....

is it worth buying ilfe11 or getting the latest downloads of iPhoto and iMovie via the apps store? is there any major differences that make the latest movie/photo apps that much better?

Also if there are better movie editing software please suggest these options

not that i think it matters but the specs of the machine are >

osx 10.9.1
2.93 intel core 2
4gb 1067 mhz ddr3

thanks in advance,
Cheers,

Vinnie

IMO, the latest versions of iMovie and iPhoto are improved enough to warrant using them. As a podcaster who creates enhanced podcasts, I'm ... a little upset ... over the removal of those features from Garageband, but they wisely left the old one in place so I can enjoy the best of both the "old" and new versions of GB. But that's the only one of the iLife programs I have an issue with (versus the previous version).

The new iMovie has had a lot of adverse comments, but having(more or less) got to grips with it, it's not too bad. The one good thing is that you can now import AVCHD footage direct from a camcorder. However, you can't do everything with it that you can do with iMovie11(v9)

The one thing that will stop me using it, is that you can only produce projects in wide format(16:9). I still use a miniDV camcorder that produces 4:3 video, so I shall stick with iMovie11 until I have to get a new camcorder.

When you download the new iMovie, your old iMovie gets put in a separate folder, so you still have it available.

cheers for the replies lads. is there any decent free movie editing software? just set my computer up and in the app store hardly anything is free compared to my iPhone 5

There is free software. There is decent software. There is editing software.

Pick any two.

(iMovie is already on your computer and is far beyond decent, so you should probably start there)

ok fair enough