Lost in resolutions

**laurids** · September 24th, 2012

Few days ago I bought a Macbook Air, which comes with a 13.3 inch screen at 1400x900.
Having spent the last 5+ years with an old-fashioned 15.4 inch screen laptop featuring 1280x800, I'm kind of puzzled. Everything is so damn small.
I had to mess up for a while increasing fonts here and there, but I still have to ctrl+ pretty much everything.

How do you 13-inch-guys do your stuff?! Is it mandatory to buy an external monitor? Or is it just me and I should switch back to a 15.4 inch display? If I'm doing the math right, with the same resolution on a 15.4 display (say the standard 15'' Macbook Pro) everything it's supposed to be bigger, isn't it?

What do you think? I use my computer mainly for academic writing, latex, reading, programming, and of course web surfing. Thanks!

**sandyd** · September 24th, 2012

Originally Posted by laurids

Few days ago I bought a Macbook Air, which comes with a 13.3 inch screen at 1400x900.
Having spent the last 5+ years with an old-fashioned 15.4 inch screen laptop featuring 1280x800, I'm kind of puzzled. Everything is so damn small.
I had to mess up for a while increasing fonts here and there, but I still have to ctrl+ pretty much everything.

How do you 13-inch-guys do your stuff?! Is it mandatory to buy an external monitor? Or is it just me and I should switch back to a 15.4 inch display? If I'm doing the math right, with the same resolution on a 15.4 display (say the standard 15'' Macbook Pro) everything it's supposed to be bigger, isn't it?

What do you think? I use my computer mainly for academic writing, latex, reading, programming, and of course web surfing. Thanks!

ahh yes
The retina displays.

I have a 15' MBP. I tried the macbook air beforehand, and found it too small (and not powerful enough for my needs). I made the same problem - the things were too small

. As a result, the MBP was bought and re-outfitted with a SSD drive.

**mamamia88** · September 24th, 2012

Originally Posted by laurids

Few days ago I bought a Macbook Air, which comes with a 13.3 inch screen at 1400x900.
Having spent the last 5+ years with an old-fashioned 15.4 inch screen laptop featuring 1280x800, I'm kind of puzzled. Everything is so damn small.
I had to mess up for a while increasing fonts here and there, but I still have to ctrl+ pretty much everything.

How do you 13-inch-guys do your stuff?! Is it mandatory to buy an external monitor? Or is it just me and I should switch back to a 15.4 inch display? If I'm doing the math right, with the same resolution on a 15.4 display (say the standard 15'' Macbook Pro) everything it's supposed to be bigger, isn't it?

What do you think? I use my computer mainly for academic writing, latex, reading, programming, and of course web surfing. Thanks!

13 inch is great for doing stuff that a normal computer user would do while sitting on a couch and watching tv. Don't buy another computer. Use the 13.3 screen while roaming around campus and get a monitor/keyboard/mouse for when you get home. I use my netbook as my main machine right now. I just setup keyboard shortcuts for switching off the external display and then switching it back on again. So when I'm ready to take it somewhere I just hit f1 and unplug everything. When I get back I hook it back up and hit f2 and boom more space. I just keep my email/terminal open on the second netbook for quick reference.