13, 15, or 17 inch?

Dilemma: If I buy the 13 or 15 inch I will also buy the large 24 inch display plus keyboard/mouse for high resolution desktop use, but wont have to do this with the 17 inch....

Is the 13 inch powerful enough to support the high resolutions demanded by the 24 inch monitor? I will be doing general computing as well as photo-editing (photoshop, lightroom) with the occasional movie.

It's said the 15 and 13 inch screens are not as high in quality as the 17 inch (poorer color, viewing angles, etc). Is this true? I would hate to buy a 13 or 15 now only to find the screen is lacking or will be refreshed soon to better match it's larger 17 inch brother.

 

Buy the 17" just all around better.

 

I would go with a 15.4-inch MacBook Pro; its more portable than the 17-inch MBP, but also can power a 24-inch display perfectly fine.

 

A 13.3" could also power a 24" LCD monitor
But I would go for the 17"...

 

I'm with these ppl. I own a 15" but wished I got the 17" instead. Sam is right about the 15" being more portable but the 17" is still more portable than most high end 17" PC laptops.

 

Right, and so my question is.... will the 13 inch struggle powering the 24 inch resolutions? Anyone own a 13 inch/24 inch monitor combo? How does it perform.... any slow downs with multitasking? Is it powerful enough?

 

TBH the size of the laptop doesn't matter.
I have a 9" netbook that could be attached to a 24" monitor and work just fine(not for graphics intensive programs).
What matters is the laptops components. If you're going to be doing photo editing and stuff then you will need a decent graphics card. And you can get 13" notebooks with powerful graphics cards, cpu's and ram.

 

The 13" unibody macbook is more than fast enough to run a 24" LED ACD.

I had the 15" 2.53GHz unibody macbook pro and I was running it with my 24" LED ACD just fine (closed shell mode or dual monitor mode) but I sold it off thinking about buying a Nehalem Mac Pro.

Anyway, I have the 2.0GHz mac mini right now with 4gb of RAM and its CPU is a bit slower compared to my 15" 2.53GHz mbp and find the mac mini is on par to the mbp (with the mbp on the 9400m gt of course but once you do use the 9600m gt its much faster for example using spaces but still more than good enough on the 9400m gt card) connected to my 24" LED ACD.

To give you an example, I think the mac mini is about the same in terms of speed as to the 13" unibody mb maybe a hair slower, in which making the 13" macbook faster. The 9400m handles the 24" LED ACD easily.

I have my 24" LED ACD connected to my mac mini via mini displayport AND I have my 40" Sony Bravia XBR6 connected via mini dvi using the mac mini in dual monitor mode and the mac mini handles it easily.

 

I'd go for the MB or 15inch MBP with the large monitor for sure. Going dual display is awesome, not to mention the MB and the 15 inch MBP are lighter and easier to carry around.

 

Right now I'm using a 15" and sometimes its size gets on my nerves, other times I wish I had something bigger. So I don't know...

 

I understand that the 13 and 15 inch macbook pros now come with only one 800 firewire plug and nothing else?

So how does apple expect its video editing audience to capture footage and save to an external drive efficiently?

Or is this an attempt to create more sales for the 17inch, which has two of these ports?

 

I would purchase the 15" MBP given the current problems with the 17" gpu, i.e. red lines etc.

 

I'd just wait a few more weeks and just buy the 17" hopefully iron out the issues.

 

17 inch and pass on the 24 inch monitor - not like it's gonna get you any more screen resolution.

the 13 and 15 inch laptops from apple are pretty lame when it comes to screen resolution. the 17" is great.

 

Just curious do you have the 17" unibody?

 

Last time I checked 1280x800 of the MB + 1920x1200 of a 24 inch monitor on dual display comes to a whole lot more resolution than the 17 inch macbook pro.

 

I wouldnt trade my 24" LED ACD in for a 17" hi resolution. The 24" is just that much bigger + an h-ips panel is a million times better than a crappy TN notebook panel from the 17".

 

The size of the laptop does not matter but its GPU does. I own both a 13 inch 2.4 Macbook and the 24 LED display and works alright with it. Though I do notice that then 9400 tend to choke a little in UI animations like minimizing/maximizing, Expose or Spaces transitions in dual monitor view. But everything is much smoother in clamshell mode.