[QUOTE=Gabe Strong;827722]Well, I'm not a CPA, so take this with a grain of salt. That being said, the way I understand the tax laws....it depends. I for example, run my own business, a small, one person video production company that does everything. There is a special section in the tax code (I think it's called a section 19 expense....not sure though,

It's a section 179 expense.

Yes, it allows you to depreciate the entire value of an asset in a single year.

And yes, whether you can do that and stay in compliance with tax laws is NOT a subject for a bunch of video guys. You need qualified professional advice if you want to protect yourself from the potential bounce back from doing improper tax accounting.

And for what it's worth.

Having recently used Motion on a smallish video project on a Quad Core Mac Pro with a X1900 - it didn't take all that much complexity to bring Motion to it's knees running DOG SLOW on that. Motion is a HUGE processor and card hog. I'd suspect that trying to run it on ANY laptop would be an exercise in aggravation.

YMMV.

My version of Motion is old, and I know there have been many changes. But it worked fine on my 1ghz PowerBook G4 - much to my surprise - at Standard Definition resolution. Much better on my dual G5. But if you wanted to work with HD... forget it. I think newer versions are better.

[QUOTE=Bill Davis;830057]Thanks Bill, ya, that's what I was talking about, the section 179 expense. You need to know and understand it though before you try to use it. For example, the computer I wrote off using the section 179 was a computer I use for my business, in other words, if you use it for personal stuff as well, I'm not sure it would qualify. As noted, ask your tax professional for specific advice. I actually found out about it just reading the tax law and asked a tax professional (who is actually my mother in law).

I actually use Motion 1 on my old 1.5 ghz G4 Powerbook. It can do simple stuff just fine, but once you start adding layers and layers of emitters and such it bogs down to a standstill.