As many rumor sites predicted, Apple today took the wraps off an updated series of MacBook Pros, the company's portable computers designed for professional use. The laptops now use the (much) faster Penryn processor from Intel and the fastest of the models comes in a custom configuration up to 2.6Ghz. The baseline specifications are impressive, but it's the custom setups that are going to be really killer. Using the Apple Store custom configuration tool I put together my dream machine, which comes in with a price tag of just (swallows hard) $3599.

Okay, it's a lot of scratch just for a portable computer, but this one is custom designed for photographers. (In addition to my post at PDN, I also run the Aperture Users Professional Network, and we were pouring over benchmarks today where we noticed that the new machines are 56% faster when working in Aperture 2 than their predecessors, according to Apple.)For many pro photographers the laptop has become the desktop—in fact, while I have both a MacBook Pro and a nice tower Mac Pro with four drives and a ton of RAM, I find myself spending most of my time using the portable computer, especially since I'm on the road so often. (Newark airport and I have become very close over the last few years.)

So my expensive dream system's not that bad when you consider what it buys: First off I opted for the dual 2.6Ghz processors, which utilizes 6MB of L2 Cache. For those of you who don't speak geek, that's a stunningly impressive amount of horsepower. The MacBook Pro also can stock up to 4GB of RAM, and the system has the brand-new NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card, a blazingly fast graphics processor. However, number-crunching isn't everything, so I spec'd this photographer's system with a 200GB 7200 RPM drive (instead of the 250GB 5400) for the fastest access times in a laptop, and the LED back lit 17" LCD display which provides full HD resolution.

For photographers or video editors, this option provides an enormous boost in screen real estate. It's like having a bigger display in the system—and bigger is better. Not only can I power the built-in display, but I can run an external 30" Cinema Display if I'd like (that price is NOT included in my dream system) thanks to the NVIDIA card. This dual-display use is actually one of the main reasons for the recent trend of all-laptop-all-the-time computing. In the field, it's a 17" display, but at home it's part of a dual monitor system. Borrowing from the MacBook Air, the new MacBook Pro uses a trackpad with the same touch-system of the iPhone and iPod Touch, so I can rotate, resize or move through images with the flick of a wrist.

Reviewing the configuration what I get is a five-pound replacement for my desktop, complete with a huge amount of RAM, super-high-res display and cool new trackpad. Compared to my Tower (twenty-or-more pounds, not at all portable) it's a serious contender. Of course there are less expensive configurations, the 15-inch model starts at $2000, but if you're going to plan out your dream system it's best to think big.