which mbp for photography?

Right now I have a macbook 2.2ghz core 2 duo and 2.5 gigs of ram, its been great for the years I have had it but its a little slow nowadays. I mostly use my mac for internet browsing and my desktop for everything else like transferring photos and using lightroom along with cs5 photoshop. I use a canon 5d and canon 7d and the files are typically around 20-30 megabytes each. I don't really care about screen size cause I am fine on my 13inch mac right now.
Which macbook pro could run say lightroom, photoshop cs5 and maybe firefox at the same time while im editing and have it run smoothly or without over heating?
Should I go refurbished or new? I'm a student maybe theres a discount?

Thanks in advance guys
-Matt

-edit-are these a fairly new generation of mbp, or is there a new update due soon?

Im not sure if there are new MBP on the way or if these are recent but I would think that the more expensive version of the 13 inch should do it.

I am a photographer and use

a mid 2010 MB Pro, 2.66 GHz i7 processor, 8 gig of ram, 500 gig 7200 RPM HDD 15" for most of my work. It drives an Apple 27" monitor. I have far too many images to store on that drive so I use several external 1 terabyte drives and a 500 gig GoFlex Satellite wifi drive as well.

My traveling machine is a late 2011 MBAir 11" with 1.8 GHz dual core 1&, 4 gig of ram, 256 SSD internally and the above externals.

These tools work well for me and I use a number of bodies including the Canon 5DII and iD III (waiting for the 1DX).

photo editing... 3 words: Screen Real Estate.

You dont have to get the BEST 17" MBP, but man, 13" would give me a headache after 30 mins if I had to edit 12MP images on it. No, get the largest you can. Assuming this will be the main machine.

The rest of the hardware doesnt matter as much for photos but 8GB RAM will be felt more than the top processor. I promise. If you get a 13", get a second monitor. I cant say it enough. Screen Real Estate.

And yes, I read the whole post. But, since you are asking for opinions, I gave mine.

I do a bit of photography and I was able to run Firefox with a ton of tabs, iMovie HD, i tunes, and iPhoto with no lag on 4gb of RAM, and that was with a dual core G5. If you get an i7 MBP 13" or even an i5, and you upgrade the RAM you should be more than fine IMO.

I'm a photography teacher and professional photographer and shoot with a 5dmkii, 5d and 60d. Recently switched to a mac laptop. First I tried the 13 MBA and really liked it, ran photoshop & lightroom just fine...you really can't underestimate the difference an ssd makes. Photoshop loads in about 1-2 seconds which is simply awesome for those of us that have stared at adobe load screens for hundreds of hours over the last 10+ years. I liked the air a lot, but wasn't impressed with the screen (colors were ok, but some highlight issues and gamut issues) or the upgradability so I returned it and got a 15" pro with the upgraded matte screen (I hate glossy screens) I upgraded the hard drive with a 256 crucial m4 ssd and put 8gb of ram in it. I also calibrated the screen and it looks great. Its a beast and is so fast I can use it as my main editing machine...its much faster in lightroom than my desktop pc rig. I can have lightroom, photoshop, premiere and loads of other programs open with no problem. Love it

whatever you get, get an ssd...totally worth it

Myself, the screen was very important to me and the extra real estate of the upgraded 15" screen is perfect for me in photoshop and lightroom...I have a very hard time editing on anything under 1600 pixels wide but thats just me