Do you edit HDV? iMovie, FCP or express?
I was planning to use a macbook rather than a powerbook, because the $700 price difference. That is half way to buying the Sony HCR-3 HDV camcorder.
Also I did not think the internal hard drives in either the macbook or macbook pro were fast enough or had enough capacity for editing. I know that HDV is approximately 11G / hr.