Apple has always been huge in the education market, but over the past couple of years they’ve become even more dominant as the favorite choice of students on campuses across the U.S.  And so you’ll be interested to hear that Apple has released a new batch of MacBooks that will most certainly be a hot item for students looking for a new laptop.

The new 13.3″ MacBook is built of all aluminum and starts at a price of $1,299.  With the $1,299 price you get the following configuration:

• Screen: 13.3” LED-backlit display
• Processor: 2.0 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (3MB L2 Cache)
• Memory: 2 GB 1066MHz DDR3
• Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForice 9400M Integrated Graphics
• Storage: 160GB hard drive
• Optical drive: Slot-loading SuperDrive

If you spend $1,599 you get a bump up to the 2.4Ghz processor, 250GB hard drive and a backlit keyboard that does not come standard on the $1,299 version.

Some unique features of this new MacBook include a “button-less” touchpad in which you simply tap the touchpad to register a left-click, tap twice for a right click and use features such as “squeezing” to zoom-in on the screen.

The screen is also updated, it uses an LED backlit display and has a glass cover on the front to provide for a glossy look that brings with it brighter colors.

Apple is using an all aluminum body for the case on the MacBook.  The look is very nice and it of course makes the MacBook more durable so it will last 4-years being dragged around campus.

The MacBook also now offers better graphics performance thanks to the inclusion of the nVidia 9400m graphics card.  Couple this with the new line of Intel processors dubbed “Montevina” and the MacBook will bring more than enough performance, and possibly help you to get some of that homework done faster!