Best low cost professional-grade camera?

Hey videographers,
I need to upgrade from a consumer to professional camcorder.
Can you recommend a reliable camcorder with 2 audio channels, great image stabilization, best picture quality, firewire, battery life and tape features at the professional level?
I'd love to have a Sony HVR-Z1U (but that will have to wait till I'm a little richer). Any second runner ups under $3000?
powerbook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Hi,
I use the Sony FX1 and I'm very happy with the image quality. I recently bought an extended time battery, that gives me about 350 minutes of recording time. I like the film 24 fps, saturation mode. The regular video mode looks very clear and high contrast. But the film saturation mode, is warm and soothing to the eyes. Sound is ok.... but I bought a converter box so that I can use XLR inputs. I bought it off of ebay from Datavis for about 3150.00 $. BTW, i buy alot of my film props off of ebay too, but don't tell anyone.
Mark
http://www.super-natural-films.com

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    On 18 Jul 2003 14:59:07 -0700, [email protected] (William
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    >Can someone recommend the best, low cost way to monitor temp at 16
    >pts. We are doing qualifiation tests of an oven used in an bio tech
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