[MacDV] Mac Book Pro vs. G4

[Robert & Susan Lloyd]

I have been making videos using a G4 dual tower 1.67GHz, FCE HD, with 
several external firewire hard drives, an external vcr and a TV 
monitor.  It has 256 KB L2 cache (per cpu), 2 MB L3 cache (per cpu), 1 
GB memory, a bus speed of 133 MHz. One internal ATA drive of 74.53 GB, 
an internal Maxtor drive of 189.92 GB.  Three external firewire drives, 
two at 500 GB and one at 112 GB.  This all seems to work fine at the 
moment.  There are two firewire ports, two USB ports.

BUT I am off the grid, using solar power, and the power consumption of 
this setup is significant, requiring me to run the backup generator 
frequently -- long term wear on the propane generator and the system 
batteries.  I live in Vermont, so solar power year round is limited.

I am wondering whether shifting to a 17" Mac Book Pro might save me 
considerable power on the computer (not the external drives).  The spec 
sheets suggest a maximum power consumption of 4.6 amps at 18.5 volts dc, 
which looks like 85 watts to me.   In contrast, the G4 line input is 
listed as 8 amps at 120 volts ac, which looks like 960 watts (can this 
be true? I can't believe it uses all that power!), with the ADC monitor 
out put of 25 volts dc at 4 amps = 100 watts.

Setting aside the cost for the moment, my main question is whether the 
17" Mac Book Pro will adequately fill my video editing needs without 
glitches.  Compoared to the G4 Dual, the CPU is faster (2.16 GHz), the 
internal Hard Drive is smaller (100 GB vs.  260 GB).  Or can I get away 
with the 5400 rpm, 120 GB hard drive?  It can support 2 GB memory, 2GB 
L2 storage, and some other good things.  If I make the switch from G4 to 
Mac Book, will I regret it?

TIA.

BobLL