The MacBooks have been discontinued, so the choice is the MacBook Pro or the entry level MacBook Air.

You can get all the prices at http://www.apple.com/uk/why-mac/compare/notebooks.html but the base models are;

£ 849 - 11 inch MacBook Air
£1,099 - 13 inch MacBook Air
£ 999 - 13 inch MackBook Pro
£1,549 - 15 inch MacBook Pro
£2,099 - 17 inch MacBook Pro

Additional options include accessories and upgrading the RAM, choosing a matt or gloss screen, increasing the hard drive size, and choosing a solid state disk versus a standard hard drive.

What do you use your laptop for, if you want it be be ultra portable because you need it on the move; choose an Air or the 13inch MBP (MacBook Pro). But if you're going to me using it mainly at home or at work then the 15inch and 17inch MBPs offer much larger screen sizes, higher performance, and they are still light enought to take from A to B. But the Airs are significantly lighter, and you'll really appreciate that if you're on the go a lot, or having to walk long distances with your laptop in a bag.

The figures above indicate the base 13 inch MBP is £100 cheaper than the 13inch AIR, however I would argue for portability it is worth paying the extra for the AIR.

My understanding is that the MBPs have faster processors than the Airs, however the Airs solid state hard disks mean the performance differentiation isn’t as great as you’d think. Having a solid state makes things rock, and gives you lightning fast boot and shutdown times.

Its worth going for as much RAM as you can, this allows you have more apps running and more documents and media open and running simulataneously. The more RAM you have, the more of this you can do; when you run out of RAM stuff goes to the swap disk, and therefore performance degrades. So its worth paying for additional RAM if you afford it, in my opinion.

Photos

MacBook Air 11 inch
MacBook Air 13 inch
MacBook Pro 13 inch
MacBook Pro 15 inch
MacBook Pro 17 inch

Maximum native screen resolution

1366x 768 - 11 inch MacBook Air
1440x 900 - 13 inch MacBook Air
1280x 800 - 13 inch MackBook Pro
1440x 900 - 15 inch MacBook Pro
1920x1200 - 17 inch MacBook Pro

Note that those Air screens are really good, you get the same resolution on the 13inch Air as you do on the 15 inch MBP, I’ve only just noticed that, but expect a res boost when the new MBPs come out.

1024x 768 - iPad 2

Usage

Note that portability plays an important part in whether to go for an Air or MBP, and the size screen you should go for. But paying more for more hardware, make sure you need the extra screen space, and extra processing power (and RAM). The 17inch Pro is the top end Mac laptop, and remember these are used by music professionals, professional artists, and software developers. If you are just using it as an every day laptop for email, social networking and web browsing, then you probably don’t need to pay for the Rolls Royce of laptops. But if that’s all you are going to be doing on your laptop then I highly suggest you go for an iPad, these are even more ultra portable, can have a permanent connection (3G) and with the launch of iOS 5 imminently you will not need a separate computer for syncing and backing up too.

Disk drive

Do you play DVDs, do you buy software on disks, do you play CDs? Well the air doesn’t come with a disk drive, so be warned. You can buy an external disk drive, so you can play the above media, but its just not as nice is it, plugging in a disk drive into your MacBook Air? Note with iTunes for downloading music and movies, plus Spotify for streaming music, and the App Store for downloading apps then you may well find you never use your disk drive (I very rarely use mine in my MacBook Pro).

What would be great is a Bluray player, but Apple have said they will never put one of these in their hardware. But with a possible updgrade of the Pros coming soon who knows?

Battery

They are all listed as having a battery life of 7 hours under normal usage, a part from the 11 inch MacBook Air which can only last 5 hours. Think again about the iPad which can last 11+ hours under normal usage, the battery life of the iPad is remarkable, the limited battery life of the 11 inch Air could be a problem, but 5 hours is a lot more than many normal laptops which usually last a maximum of 3 hours on battery.

Soon to have an upgrade?

And yes be warned, the MacBook Pros haven’t been upgraded for a while and the rumour mill is that they will soon be upgraded. No external redesign is expected though. This compares to the Airs which were recently upgraded and are therefore a safe bet at the moment.

Note the rumour is of faster processes, but expect RAM increase, harddrive size increase, and most likely a screen resolution increase.

Conclusion

So its all about how much money you have got and what you are using it for. And maybe if you’re not a high end user then considering an iPad might be a better step?