Hi,

I use a Mac mini, but my ex parnter, who has been demoted to roommate, has a powerbook that I worked on for a while. It's a really nice machine to use. I too, had just switched from being a pc person all my life to using a Mac. At first, it seems a little weird but you get the hang of it really quick. Once you get really good at the drop and drag feature, you can work alot faster than with a pc.

Imovie is a great program for video which comes free. I find Graphic Converter by Lemke to be indespensible. It's like Thumbsplus, has all the great batch features and only cost like $32 or something like that. Talk about a great deal.

RBrowserlite is a great ftp freeware program for the Mac.

Performance wise, Powerbooks can handle just about anything if you get the fastest processor they offer. You may have to up your space capacity if you're doing movie work.

Not worrying about spyware and viruses, I can't tell you how much time this frees up. I never have to reboot. I used to have to reboot my pc constantly adding things, removing things... with the powerbooks, you really don't have to worry about that.

Hope this helps you.