Potential Noob Ibook Owner Questions

[spray]

Hi Guys,
Long Time Reader, First Time Poster.

Basically, im off to university next year and im in the market for a notebook to take with me. Im currently a windows kid, but for the past year have given much serious thought to switching. After much research i have my eye on this ibook, with superdrive, a mod from MCE:

http://store.mcetech.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=MTOS&Product_Co...e=APP-M9018LLA

Through much research i've found that a mac will more than adequately fufill my computing requirements, but i have yet been able to find answers to my video questions.

At the moment i download a large number of video files from the edonkey and fasttrack network, ranging from films to tv shows.

I basically want to know how well suited a mac is for taking the downloaded avi/divx/xvid; converting it to either mpeg1 vcd or mpeg2 svcd; then burning either straight to svcd or making a 6hr long dvd.

I currently use VDub, Tmpgenc, Ulead DVD Movie Factory and a number of other minor tools to complete this operation on my pc, is there software like this available for the mac.

What are encoding times like on a G3 900? On my current desktop, an Athlon XP2600 (roughly 2.06ghz) i can achieve 0.8x-1.5x speed encoding, based on quality. What should i expect from the ibook?

I realise that i have probably setting myself up for much flaming, go by the films, quit bringing down the media companies etc., but this is pretty much the pivotal decision on which i will base my laptop purchase, i know that i can achieve all this on a windows notebook, but really would love to buy an ibook.

Cheers in advance
(Sorry about lenghty post )

[galactica]

you can essentially do anything you asked for on a mac.
the apps are different of coarse, but it will work. Now this is a G3 processor not a G4 so it wont be as fast as it could with say a G4 powerbook, but thats what you get for the $

since you are going to school you may want to consider using the applestore educational discount. as a student you get a discount on apple computers purchased though apple.com

at educatinal discount you can get the 14" iBook for only a little more than the price listed here, and I think shipping is free still..

just give it a look, www.apple.com, click EDUCATION on left hand side, type in your zip code, select your college/university then click I agree, prices are now different.

Honestly though, id look around for a used g4 titanium powerbook, even the 867 you should be able to get for around the price of the ibook on the site you had. with the G4 the processing will be better and your encoding time will be less.

im not sure about processing time for sure on the ibook because i dont have one. I have the G4 dual 1.25 and the processing time varies depending on what i want to do max would be maybe 6 hours for a hard core dvd to svcd encoding.

anyone have an iBook or a g3 whos running some enocdings who can share times