I see I showed up just in time. =) For the software you mentioned, the 1.5Ghz Powerbook will do well, just don't expect to run them all at the same time. I bought the 1.33/17" 2 months ago (with assurance that there wasn't a likely PowerBook upgrade until at least the fall.... thanks guys!) and love it intensely. By comparison, I work on dual 1.25 G4's at work, and don't notice much difference. Of course, at work I'm slowed down by the speed of the network. (I do different things at work and at home as well. Work is at a commercial print shop, and home is primarily video editing, with DTP mixed in.)
-As a side note, we also have a dual 2ghz Dell, and it is a complete dog at all tasks put to it... - (Oh, I'm gonna catch flack for that completely true statement!)
Here are my recommendations: Go with the PowerBook, so you have your mobility (I took mine to Italy, and it was great having it there). Get as much RAM as you can afford as there is no such thing as too much. (Mr Proffitt will disagree, but he's not a Mac guy, nor in "our" line of business.) If you have the option, get the faster hard drive. BlueTooth & FireWire are built in, so you will have them. BlueTooth is a wireless replacement for USB for devices like mice, keyboards and PDAs, and I love my BlueTooth mouse! FireWire is a high-speed wired connection for connecting to high performance devices, like video cameras and hard drives as well as the iPod. Back in the day, Macs had SCSI, and FireWire pretty much takes its place for external peripheral connectivity.
As for printers.... I have really expensive taste, so you probably don't want to hear my recommendations. There are low end solutions, but be warned, graphics applications (Illustrator particularly) require a printer with PostScript capability. Otherwise you have to make PDFs of everything to print it to a low-end printer.
If you want to be able to print from "anywhere" at your home/office and not worry about connectivity, the AirPort base station has a USB port on it which you can use to plug a USB printer into. As for brands, I wouldn't get anything but HP or Epson, but that's only what my ... jeeze, has it been 10 years already? ... experience has taught me.
I think I've taken up enough of your time. If you want, you can email further questions to jeff@crprint.com