Need Macbook advice

My 1.25Ghz w/ 1Gb ram, G4 Powerbook is getting a bit long in the tooth.

More infuriating is how often the spinning beachball
halts my work. Quie often, I have nothing other than
Safari open with like 7 tabs and I'll get the beachball.

So I'm looking at upgrading to either a Macbook or Macbook Pro.

I have a few questions that maybe some of you developers can
help with.

1. What's the battery life comparison between these two? My
PB rarely gave me more than 2hrs. I recall the G4 iBooks were
alot better. Is the battery life better in either the MB or MBP?
Yes I know the specs say up to 6hrs for MB and up to 5hrs for
MBP, but in your real life experience, please let me know what
to expect.

2. For watching movies, DVD's and doing development work; I
probably don't need the 256Mb video card option do I? No
I won't play games on this and Photoshop work is minimal.

3. Is it true the current Core 2 Duo cpu's are crippled
somewhat because the chipset on the logic board only runs at
667Mhz. I hear the next chipset, Santa Rosa, should run at
800Mhz and be out early next year. How much performance
improvement can one expect from this.


I think I'm pretty much decided on getting the MBP if I do
decide to buy one now. Simply for the higher resolution. This
is one thing I've always hated on the Apple laptops, very
limited resolutions compared to PC laptops.

Thanks