[spreadlight]

Simple question:

Should I go for the new 12" 1.33mhz or 15" 1.33mhz powerbook?

I've been using a Titanium for 3.5 years, and less the "white spot" and chipping paint, it's been a fabulous machine. That said, it's time to upgrade!

I will mainly use the machine as a teaching tool, to display Keynote presentations to supplement by lectures.
I would also use it to do basic word processing, Internet stuff, and light computational modeling using Matlab.
I don't plan on using it for gaming.

The 12" is attractive because of its relatively low weight, small size and hence portability
.
My hesitation is about the reported low LCD quality found on the 12”. (Can supercal really “fix” a low quality LCD??)

Also, from a computational point of view, is the 12” 1.3mhz as fast as the 15” 1.33mgz?

Finally, can an external monitor be connected to the 12”?

Thanks for the input!!

[Michel_80]

15". People will say that you can attach an external monitor but it is too troublesome. 15 is a nice size and all the issues have been sorted. (I think).

[rambo47]

I've always thought the 15" is the sweet spot in Apple's PowerBook lineup. It's quite large, but not the collosus that is the 17" model. Yeah, the 12" is nice and portable, but since the 15" is still fairly light at 5.6 lbs. IMHO, the large screen more than makes up for the larger overall size. In my house we have all three sizes. My 5'4" tall wife has the 17" (naturally), while I use both the 12" and 15" PowerBooks. My first choice is to grab for the 15".

[spreadlight]

Michel_80 and Rambo47

Thanks for your posts but your comments are, well, quite subjective...

Any hard numbers to support your preferences??

e.g., performance difference, connectivity, overall quality, etc...

[rambo47]

With the first revision 12" the processor was inferior, having no L3 cache. Looks like they all use the same processor now but I'm not sure. With the 15" model you get some extras like FireWire800 instead of FW400, better graphics card, S-Video out, and probably some more stuff, all of which doesn't really amount to much to me. For me it's all about the big 15" screen, and that's totally subjective. Oh, and the 1.5 GHz processor, not a very big jump from 1.33, but that kind of thing generally helps with resale value.