The current PBs may in fact be the BEST all-around laptops will make for some time. Why? Everything still works! Peripherals, wifi, bluetooth, usb and firewire, etc has been well vetted. Tiger does work very smoothly -- would make Santana proud.
Once the IA macs come out - and Steve J said that the low-end will be upgraded first, which I translate to mean the G4-based machines, such as the mac mini and laptops - there will be all sorts of cranky incompatibilities. I suspect they'll be ironed out by os x 11.2 or 11.2 (or whatever you want to call the next gen OS for intel machines), but in the meantime, a 1.5 GHz PB12 G4 running 10.4.x will be very stable and efficient.
Your iBook is slow for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with the processor (hard drive, graphics, bus, and other, more subtle changes that make the PBs faster). You would see more than a 2-fold speed increase in an updated PB12, which is usually my threshold for an upgrade. It will see you through the transition time.
But - when the full dual-core Intel mobile chip is released next year, AND with a mac os that takes advantage of that extra processing power, will you want to upgrade? Perhaps. IF that extra power actually makes a difference to you. If you're just going to use it for a web, email, office machine -- my guess is you won't see something significantly better until the rev B IA machines are out.
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