Apple MacBook Pro 2008 Edition (Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD)

The good: Updated CPUs, improved battery life, adds touch pad gestures from the MacBook Air.

The bad: Small performance premium over the cheaper 13-inch MacBook; only 90 days of toll-free technical support; still no SD card reader.

The bottom line: A solid, if predictable, upgrade to the MacBook Pro line, but noteworthy for stealing the MacBook Air's best feature--expanded gesture controls for the touch pad.

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Description: This configuration of the Apple MacBook Pro 2008 is a 5.5-pound, thin-and-light notebook computer. Compared to other thin-and-light notebooks on the market, it is expensive at around $2,455. Has Wi-Fi (wireless connectivity) built-in. Features NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics with 512MB of video memory.

Pros: Has a 250GB hard drive, which is considerably larger than some similarly priced notebooks. Also, this notebook has 1440 x 900 native screen resolution. This is higher than the average notebook on the market today, but is to be expected for a notebook of this price.

Cons: The Apple MacBook Pro 2008 comes with entry-level word processing software -- serious business or academic writers may want to upgrade to a more powerful office suite .

Suitability: A thin-and-light notebook, suited for business computing. Archive your digital videos using this computer's DVD writer. With 512MB of dedicated video RAM, this machine will do tremedously better than most other notebooks, when it comes to multimedia applications and games. Let your computer be your digital darkroom; remove red-eye, power lines, and old roommates from your digital pictures with this notebook’s bundled photo editing software. If you have a wireless network at home, wirelessly browse the Web from any room in your house with this Wi-Fi enabled notebook.

Value: Despite its expensive price, this notebook has great features for the money. However, if you were to judge strictly by how large the screen is, the average price of thin-and-light products with a similar screen size is quite a bit less -- right around $1,552.

Suggestions: (1) Given this device's Wi-Fi capability, you may want to get a wireless access point for your home, so that you can browse the Web more conveniently from any room. (2) To get the most out of this computer's Bluetooth capability, you could have a Bluetooth-enabled headset, handheld or other device, and be able to link it wirelessly to your computer within a range of 20-or-so feet inside the same room.