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Comment by nnq | Hacker News Reader

> on the rare occasions I want to travel

Then why not get the 15"?! I honestly don't understand why the 13-14" screen size exists. If you want something really portable it's got to be 12" or less. If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more...

(The only thing more nonsensical than this is the wide screen AR when we know a 4:3 ratio would always be superior. Yeah, power users will customize their UI to get rid of the crap wasting vertical screen space... but those very same power users will also want to see long batches of code or spreadsheet cells, or text, so they'd still crave for more vertical space.)

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13-14" is perfect size for fitting into a normal backpack or satchel, whereas 15" is starting to get to the point where you need a specialist laptop bag.

I find this to be true as well. A ~13.5" machine packs easily and, is noticeably more useful to me than a 12".

And 12" is just a little too small for my preference, though not wholly unbearable.

My 15" and larger machines have been much harder to travel with easily. For productivity, I have usually preferred the 15"+ machines. If that were the only consideration, then I wouldn't think twice. But they have been a pain to haul.

> If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more...

I have a 14" T470P (2560x1440) and I do 'serious' work on it all the time, its more than adequate for when I want to work away from a desktop.

I went from 15 to 13 due to getting an amazing deal on mbp. Won't go back. Never thought I would like the 13 but its actually way better than a 15 for taking with. Plugged into monitor at home anyways.

put me in as another 15->13 (well 13.3") convert. the weight reduction is also a nice benefit.

> If you want something really portable it's got to be 12" or less. If you want something you can do serious work on too it must be 15" or more

What about something semi-serious... like Photoshop or Illustrator which can take reasonable amount of resources, but far fewer than a video editor or an IDE. A 13" with a really good screen can handle this task well and doesn't need the added heft of a 15".

If it doesn't have to be portable why spend that much on a laptop at all? Why not get a desktop you can at least sensibly upgrade/fix etc?

There's no reason a 12" (and 13.3/14) laptop should be less powerful than a 15" or 17", though.

I'd buy that even if it adds one centimeter to the height (gasp ! Now I can have an RJ-45 port and more than one USB port ?!).

> There's no reason a 12" (and 13.3/14) laptop should be less powerful than a 15" or 17", though.

yes there is. area and volume inside the chassis increase a lot faster than the length of the diagonal. the limiting factors for performance are heat dissipation and power. a bigger chassis can evacuate heat faster and house a larger battery that can sustain high power use for longer.

But we'd get a larger chassis just by doubling the height, right ?

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