Price for this model: $2,199. That's $400 more than the slightly slower 15-in. model and $300 less than the biggest MacBook Pro, which offers the same components with a 17-in. screen. The 17-in. model now costs $2,499, $200 more than the last 17-in. model did -- a sign that Apple thinks the recession truly is over, at least for wannabe 17-in. laptop owners.

The line starts at $1,199 for a 13-in. MacBook Pro with a 2.3GHz dual-core Core i5 chip, the integrated graphics processor and a 320GB hard drive -- meaning there's a MacBook Pro for a range of pocketbooks.

All MacBook Pros come with 4GB of RAM, though you can double that to 8GB for an extra $200, and you can really turn your laptop into a screamer by having Apple swap out the hard drive for a solid-state drive (SSD). I have a two-year-old 17-in. MacBook Pro -- same basic design, look and feel as the current version -- and it zips along with a 256GB SSD I added.

In the old days of the megahertz wars, say, five or 10 years ago, computer owners could always one-up friends and foes by getting a new computer with the latest, fastest chip. But the arrival of dual-core, then quad-core, processors, made it harder to easily compare chips on a megahertz basis. Here's why: You can crunch more data with multi-core processors rated at slower speeds.