But there's a price to pay. SSDs, while more common than they were even a couple of years ago, still cost vastly more per gigabyte than hard disks. A 128GB SSD costs an extra $100 on the higher-end 15-in. MacBook Pro, a 256GB SSD adds $500, and a 512GB SSD sets you back a whopping $1,100 -- the proverbial arm and a leg. But if you're looking to buy something great with this year's tax refund, an SSD sure would fit the bill. You won't be sorry.

The latest generation of MacBook Pro laptops represents a solid advance to a line-up that has proved to be popular among Mac buyers -- and with good reason. They're well-designed, solid, reliable, feature-rich and offer a measure of cutting-edge technology.

The Sandy Bridge-based processors offer noteworthy speed advances over past models, with little trade-off in battery life or heat. The updated graphics system should handle any gaming or digital video tasks you throw at it, and the inclusion of Thunderbolt offers a glimpse of future I/O technology that -- if you can take advantage of it -- will make these laptops a smart investment.

Although they look just like recent iterations of MacBook Pros, they're anything but when it comes to the technology inside.