Portable editing solution.

I'm way late on posting this, but I did indeed come up with a portable editing system, and it does indeed work. I got quite a bit of work done on my recent European vacation, especially on airplanes and at airports. My recipe for cutting on the run is as follows...

1. Apple MacBook. You know I love the MacBook. Bang for the buck, I think it's the best computer available. A MacBook Pro has a bigger screen and more horsepower, but it is also heaver and more expensive.
2. Extra MacBook battery. The MacBook is energy efficient, but video editing eats a lot of juice, so an extra battery comes in handy for long editing sessions when no AC power is available.
3. Apple World Travel Adapter Kit. So you can hook up to an AC outlet and recharge your MacBook anywhere in the world.
4. Final Cut Pro. According to Apple's documentation, their Final Cut Pro editing software will not run on a MacBook. The documentation is wrong. As long as you have enough memory (at least 1 GB, I have 2 GB), Final Cut Pro is go for MacBook.
5. Audacity. Audio editing software, should handle most sonic needs not covered by Final Cut Pro.  And the price is right -- free.
6. Bose Quiet Comfort 2 Headphones. So you can hear your movie's audio over the noise of the airplane/crowd/etc.
7. LaCie Little Big Disk. The secret weapon. LaCie's 320 GB "Little Big Disk" is an external FireWire drive that doesn't need a separate power supply -- it gets all the power it needs to run from the same FireWire cable that it uses to exchange data with the computer.
   
   
   I know some airlines forbid the use of external disk drives on planes, but the LaCie drive is tiny, easily hidden from the flight crew and/or nosy passengers. Since 320 GB is plenty of space for all of the Interplanetary picture (in SD) and sound files, the LaCie "travel" drive is now my main project disk. I can carry it around from computer to computer (as long as said computer has the latest version of Final Cut Pro installed, of course).