Im just really getting into post processing and dont know a lot about it yet. Im taking a course at Adorama next month and have been playing around.

I am planning on using both Aperture and also Photoshop but will do most of the work in Aperture and only some of the pictures will get Photoshop treatment. I will be doing a lot of Canon RAW processing. I am currently using a 17 inch Power PC Mac. I know what I should use, but.....
What will be the real world differences with something suboptimal? The current powerbook is slow.

Would a new 13 inch Intel Powerbook with dual core and 2 gigs of RAM be much faster. How much slower would that be than a 15 inch with 3 gigs and the onboard video RAM that it has? Would I notice a big difference? I REALLY dont want to carry a 15 inch notebook. Also, would a pair of Mac Minis maxed out with RAM give a decent platform? I have posted on related things before but they have upped the processors on the 13 inch notebook and Im really tempted. It doesnt have to be the fastest in the world, Im willing to sacrifice some speed for smaller size and lower cost. Thanks for sharing any experience.

Would a new 13 inch Intel Powerbook with dual core and 2 gigs of RAM be much faster. How much slower would that be than a 15 inch with 3 gigs and the onboard video RAM that it has? Would I notice a big difference? I REALLY dont want to carry a 15 inch notebook. Also, would a pair of Mac Minis maxed out with RAM give a decent platform? I have posted on related things before but they have upped the processors on the 13 inch notebook and Im really tempted. It doesnt have to be the fastest in the world, Im willing to sacrifice some speed for smaller size and lower cost. Thanks for sharing any experience.

Well, I am a PC guy, but the general specs you're looking for to do image processing are the same on both platforms. You want 2GB of RAM, no question. The faster the processor the better. I have a 1.8GHz Intel dual-core in my laptop and a 2.6 GHz dual-core AMD64 in my desktop. Both run Photoshop quite well. Go dual-core.

Video RAM is less crucial for PP work - as long as you've got what MacOS needs to run well, you're fine. I think my laptop has 128MB and my desktop has 256MB.

Faster hard drives help too - my desktop has faster drives than my laptop, and I notice a difference when opening/saving out large files.

Spend your $$$ on processor and RAM. The rest of the stuff will be sufficient.

Should be just fine. The Graphic's card might be a little lacking, but should work. upgrage the ram for sure. I run both programs on my MBP though.

Would a new 13 inch Intel Powerbook with dual core and 2 gigs of RAM be much faster. How much slower would that be than a 15 inch with 3 gigs and the onboard video RAM that it has? Would I notice a big difference? I REALLY dont want to carry a 15 inch notebook. Also, would a pair of Mac Minis maxed out with RAM give a decent platform? I have posted on related things before but they have upped the processors on the 13 inch notebook and Im really tempted. It doesnt have to be the fastest in the world, Im willing to sacrifice some speed for smaller size and lower cost. Thanks for sharing any experience.

Do you mean the 13 inch macbook? I bought the 15 inch MacBookPro and love it. It is 8 ounces heavier than the 13 inch macbook. The great news is I can run the 30 inch Apple display with it. Which is what I do for my pictures. It's great. I can see all the pictures.

I like Aperture, but it works much differently from Photoshop. I may be wrong, but the corrections that you make in Aperture don't carry over to Photoshop. It stores pictures in a strange way, too. I suppose I'm so used to Photoshop that learning any new software is hard. I wish there was better integration between the two.