I'm looking to get a thinkpad for rest of my highschool and college and currently trying to decide between X230, T440p, and T540p. My main factors are: Is it portable enough to be comfortably used through college? Is the screen good? (Availability of good gamut and contrast screen is more important, since I am planning to carry around an additional portable screen.) ... And that's about it. Is 14 or 15.6 inch all that difficult to carry around? I'm about 6"2, although I do not consider myself physically strong. Any opinion will be appreciated! Thanks. || SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2004-05-02 Does size really matter? Debating the 12 - Inch vs. 15 - Inch PowerBook By Vincent Laforet, The New York Times
Photo by Vincent Laforet / The New York Times
Does size matter? Comparing the 12 inch Powerbook to the 15 inch PowerBook.
| I've been debating for months over a simple question: what Apple PowerBook to bring with me to Athens. I've owned both the older 15 - inch laptop and the current 12 inch models in the past - but I've had the chance to significantly expand my vocabulary for close to a year now, following my desk's switch to IBM T-40 ThinkPads. Luckily --- I'm making the switch back to Mac. While the PC offered me some speed advantages, I never felt quite as comfortable with them - it's hard to throw away close to 15 years of Mac troubleshooting experience - only to find oneself (and others around you) completely inept when faced with a malfunctioning PC. Therefore as I contemplate my return to Macs, I am faced with the following decision: a. do I go with the 15 inch - and take advantage of the larger screen and - I assume - superior performance to deal with the oodles of images I'll shoot on a typical Olympic marathon day or b. go with the smaller, lighter 12 inch - sacrificing performance for the smaller laptop that won't be as much of the burden in the oppressive Athenian humid heat. The big question, ultimately is: (*besides finding a shrink to deal with such ridiculous technological and ultimately completely-irrelevant-to-your-quality-of-life-obsessions) how much of a sacrifice in performance we're talking about - not only in speed test, but also in dealing with the smaller screen/desktop space (and as a result ease of use/getting around) between the two models. Luckily - our technology folks at The Times own all three PowerBook models (12inch, 15inch, the "*sherpa-available-separately" 17 -inch titan, and a G5 Tower - so I thought it would be nice to do some informal tests. It's important to note that I did not do any extensive testing (I'm not doing 3-D video animations or complex web designs here (they make desktop machines for that ) --- I'm simply trying to get a freakin' image out as quickly and simply as possible on that impossible deadline! I simply chose to time (with a stopwatch) the basic steps we all tend to depend on, namely: copying over disks, batch captioning JPEG files while ingesting, simultaneously opening a series of files from our editing program into Adobe Photoshop, performing a few simple steps in Photoshop - that alone would give me a pretty good idea of the performance I'm interested in. I didn't see the need to test the time it takes to caption a photo, save a JPEG file or to transmit it - that depends on how quickly you hunt and peck on the keyboard, and how many "high-mom-I'm-the-drunk-idiot-on-the-phone-endlessly-waving-at-the-tv-camera-from-behind-homeplate" freaks you're sharing your "high-speed" cellphone bandwidth with at the stadium... I used three computers for the test (none were from the new line released a little over a week ago - but from the previous generation:) A 12 - inch 1GHZ laptop with 768MB of RAM with 32MB of VRAM (video RAM), a 15 - inch 1GHZ laptop with 1GB of RAM and 64MB or VRAM, and a Dual 1.8 GHZ G5 Tower with 1 GHZ of RAM all Running OSX.3. I was really surprised to find the following: my assumption that there would be a significant drop in performance with the smaller 12 - inch model and the 15- inch (based on an assumed bias that smaller = slower) was completely false. In fact I saw absolutely no significant performance difference (less than 5% to 10% differences in elapsed time on average) with all on the following tests: The copying of a full 512MB CF card with 182 JPEGs via a USB 2.0 Zio Reader to a folder via the finder - was in fact 3 seconds faster on the 12 inch than the 15 inch model in the approx. 2 minute process. In fact the Dual 1.8GHZ G5 tower was all of 6 seconds faster than the 12 - inch ... quite insignificant. I then tested ingesting the same disk over within Photo Mechanic 4.0 while applying a generic caption during the process --- and the 15 - inch was 12 seconds faster than the 12 inch (which was pretty insignificant w/ the avg. 2 mn 40sec results) - the G5 tower was only 30 seconds faster than the 15 inch. I tested scrolling through contact sheets and images previews - for some strange reason - the 12 inch did better than the 15 - inch jumping from one image to the next within the preview window - even though the video card in the 12 inch had only 32MB of VRAM vs. the 64MB in the 15 - inch ... a very surprising result to me ... perhaps it just comes down to increased screen size and time it takes to draw each preview (the 12 - inch has a resolution of 1024X768 vs. the 15 inch's 1280X854, ergo more pixels to calculate on each preview --- I assume that if I were to reduce the size of the preview screen on the 15 inch to match the size of the smaller 12 - inch screen - the results would be identical. The time it took for the previews to pop up was still a bit slow for my taste on both models - there was a noticeable lag that had me waiting for the next frame to pop up every time ... the people at Camera Bits tell me that they are working on faster algorithms and updates to further minimize this delay to allow for closer to real-time previewing of un-cached images ... this was one test where the G5 tower blew the laptops out of the water - the drawing of previews was nearly instantaneous and allowed you to literally fly through frames. It's worth lugging down a tower to the games in my opinion if you're an editor who's planning on being stuck in the media center for two weeks - there is a significant boost in your ability to fly through every single frame as quickly as you once did with a loupe on film - and therefore you can significantly reduce the chance that you'll miss a small detail that can't be caught by simply looking at a digital contact sheet...
There are a number of factors you need to take into account when buying a new laptop before you hand over your hard-earned money. In some ways, many of the different factors are linked together. Take, for example, whether or not you should go for a 13-inch or 15-inch laptop. It's not just a simple case of "oh, I want a smaller/larger" laptop anymore. The screen size is often integrated into other specifications. So how to make the best choice? Here's what we think you need to consider. Where and how you'll be using your laptopGT Omega Racing backpack Do you travel a lot? Go to school, college or university every day and need to take your laptop with you? Whatever the reason, if you leave the house with your laptop a lot, then portability is key. Which mostly leads itself to suggest you get a smaller, 13-inch laptop that's light and easy to carry around. However, there are laptops out there like the Dell XPS 15 (opens in new tab) which pack a 15-inch display into the frame of a 14-inch laptop. Dell isn't the only company making slim and light 15-inch laptops either. The XPS 15 is probably the best example, but others like the HP Spectre x360 15 and ASUS ZenBook Pro aren't exactly bricks while still having a larger screen. Also consider how you'll be using it. If you're a video editor, then you'll benefit from having a larger screen. If you're predominantly writing, browsing the web, even consuming media, then you'll be fine with a 13-inch. Dedicated graphics for gaming or creative workIt isn't just gamers that want dedicated NVIDIA or AMD graphics in a laptop. Creators, such as video editors, will also be looking for some added power in this field. While there are 13-inch laptops out there with good graphics capabilities, traditionally this is one area that size does matter. A larger laptop means more room for a GPU, and importantly, more room for GPU cooling. So you'll not find a 13-inch Ultrabook with a GTX 1060 GPU in it. We're not quite at that magical stage just yet. Smaller laptops, as well as thin Ultrabook-style notebooks like the ZenBook Pro tend to have either last-gen mobile GPUs or lower-end of the spectrum current generation ones. If you want a serious GPU you'll be looking for a 15-inch laptop, most likely a gaming one. More: Best gaming laptops To 4K or not to 4KSomewhat tied in with the consideration for graphics, but if you absolutely need a 4K display, then you'll probably be better with a 15-inch laptop. There are smaller options, like the Razer Blade Stealth that have small, 4K displays, but generally that many pixels come on the larger size panels. And to be honest, if you need 4K for say, video editing, then you'll probably want a larger laptop for reasons mentioned above; graphics and a physically larger screen to look at. With 4K, or generally higher-than-Full HD resolutions, you also usually get touchscreens. Many 1080p laptops are non-touch, so factor in whether or not you desire to manipulate Windows with touch. Ports, ports and more portsStrix GL702 Another byproduct of physical size is how many ports you can actually fit on the sides. As laptops become thinner and lighter, the connections on the sides are slowly disappearing. Are you ready for a ZenBook 3 with a single USB-C port? Or do you want your HDMI, Ethernet, SD card and a bunch of USB ports? If it's the latter, then 15-inch laptops are where you'll still find the best offering. If your laptop is your only PC and you want to use it like a desktop at home, then looking at a larger notebook will give you a better chance of not needing an external dock. Also good if you have a phobia of carrying dongles. Those are some of the things we think you should consider when choosing your laptop size, but ultimately the decision is yours. Carefully look at what you'll be doing and where you'll be doing it while deciding. The end goal is to happen upon a considered decision that leaves you getting what you need in the best package possible. If you don't need a large screen, lots of ports, a beefy GPU or a 4K display, you're probably not going to want the added size, sometimes cost of a 15-inch laptop. See which boxes you need to tick, then see which ones the laptops you like at both sizes also tick. Then make your decision. More: Best Windows Laptops of 2017
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