Render Times

It just depends how much video edinting you want to do. If you serious about it, and you have them oney to spend, get the Power Mac. If you don't have the money or don't care about the speed of rendering get the iMac. The iMac will still be good and it will get the job done, but the Power Mac will just be better.

 

Get the power Mac!
I have a 1.8 DP and just bought an iMac 1.8, not only render times cut in more than half, in FCP the realtime effects, with the DP a couple of them are not realtime , in the iMac a only couple of them are realtime. HD trailers like serenity in 1080p play like it was a regular trailer; in the iMac I have to close everything and run it fullscreen and it still stutters a bit.
Get any of the DP power Macs and your computer will run rings around your buddies G4. Both of mine have 64megs vid card, and 1GB of ram.

If video is your thing, get a power Mac! Besides being able to almost have a terabyte of internal storage rules!

 

The PM G5 kicks serious butt in encoding and rendering. You will not be happy with anything less. Clichéd but true.

 

what ever you do i would advise against getting the power mac G5 1.8Ghz (not dual) as the imac is faster, has a better graphics card, comes with a monitor, and its cheaper.

so if your thinking about the single 1.8 PM just get an iMac instead

 

The main reason your powerbook is going to be slower than your buddy's PM is the hard drive. Seeing as your laptop has Firewire 800, the first thing you should try is getting a Firewire 800 external drive, that should make a big difference, and keep you on your powerbook for a while. If you still upgrade later, the FW drive will still be useful for the video stuff.

 

I would HIGHLY recommend the PowerMac given that you're into Video Editing. I have a dual 2.5 and the time I save with rendering on this machine can not be overstated.

Good luck in your decision.