It is time to get a new laptop. My faithful G3 finally died. It had FCE1. On the new Intel MacBook I had planned to install FCE4 figuring I could do preliminary work before exporting a project to FCP5 on my G5 to do finish work.
Apple/Discussions/FCE had several unconfirmed opinions suggesting my plan would be unsuccessful. Opinions?

I also discovered a basket full of complaints about the extraordinary amount of reatures removed from FCE4, making it a "dumbed down" product. Anyone know where I could find a copy of FCE3.5?

I'm not sure you'd even want to try; those older versions of FCP are not going to play well with either the newer OS and QT versions at all. If you're unwilling to pony-up to FCS2 then find a copy of FCS "1" or FCP 5.1.

If you're going with a Mac Book Pro then you will need at least FCP 5.1 to run on the intel processor, just a heads-up.