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13" Productivity

N

nubbythebear

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 26, 2008
16
0
I have looked through many threads no this but I had trouble finding one specific to this.

I'm a college student thinking about getting the 13" for school.

For people using or who have used the 13", is it easy/possible to have both an internet site and word up on the screen at the same time?

I currently have a 2008 pre-unibody 15" mbp and am looking to upgrade (also because the unibodies have sata II so I can throw in a SSD)

As long as the 13" doesn't significantly hinder productivity when writing papers, I will be moving to the 13"

Any tips on how to fit a word document and a pdf/internet site on the same page?

Yes, I will probably get an external monitor for dorm usage, but when I want to study in the library or outside my room I want to be able to be somewhat efficient on my 13"

Any thoughts/suggestions on how the 13" fares with writing papers
 
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nubbythebear said:
I have looked through many threads no this but I had trouble finding one specific to this.

I'm a college student thinking about getting the 13" for school.

For people using or who have used the 13", is it easy/possible to have both an internet site and word up on the screen at the same time?

I currently have a 2008 pre-unibody 15" mbp and am looking to upgrade (also because the unibodies have sata II so I can throw in a SSD)

As long as the 13" doesn't significantly hinder productivity when writing papers, I will be moving to the 13"

Any tips on how to fit a word document and a pdf/internet site on the same page?

Yes, I will probably get an external monitor for dorm usage, but when I want to study in the library or outside my room I want to be able to be somewhat efficient on my 13"

Any thoughts/suggestions on how the 13" fares with writing papers
Click to expand...

Word eats up a lot of real estate with the menus so I doubt you will enjoy having a doc and web page up at the same time. JMO ~~~~~. As an aside, how do you edit with Word and have a web page up on your 15". I do this myself but tile the aps over each other.

The 13" would be fine for editing a doc in Word. Plenty of speed and screen size.

cheers
JohnG
 
Having them open side by side so they're both visible at the same time may prove hard. Hell, its even hard on a 15" screen. But if you had both of them open, but NOT side by side, it will be fine. You just use 1 simple shortcut to switch between Word and the web browser.:D
 
johnnymg said:
Word eats up a lot of real estate with the menus so I doubt you will enjoy having a doc and web page up at the same time. JMO ~~~~~. As an aside, how do you edit with Word and have a web page up on your 15". I do this myself but tile the aps over each other.

The 13" would be fine for editing a doc in Word. Plenty of speed and screen size.

cheers
JohnG
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick responses guys.

For my mbp 15" setup I have like a website next to word with word resized so that I only see the area i type (so minus the margins of the document) and then the internet page takes up the rest of the screen. and then macs are cool in that they let you scroll a window that isn't active (like i'll be in word but i can still scroll firefox without having to click on the window first)

it looks ilke 13" is barely barely doable. i feel like it slows me down a lot when I have to keep switching between windows vs having them both open at the same time.

this is the only deciding factor between a 13" and a 15" for me
 
nubbythebear said:
Thanks for the quick responses guys.

For my mbp 15" setup I have like a website next to word with word resized so that I only see the area i type (so minus the margins of the document) and then the internet page takes up the rest of the screen. and then macs are cool in that they let you scroll a window that isn't active (like i'll be in word but i can still scroll firefox without having to click on the window first)

it looks ilke 13" is barely barely doable. i feel like it slows me down a lot when I have to keep switching between windows vs having them both open at the same time.

this is the only deciding factor between a 13" and a 15" for me
Click to expand...

Ah, will you be reading stuff on FireFox then typing it up at the same time?
 
mrsir2009 said:
Ah, will you be reading stuff on FireFox then typing it up at the same time?
Click to expand...

Yeah. Or I've found in the past that I've had to have a pdf and word open to extract data from the article and answer questions for class. And it was much quicker having the two open and viewable at the same time
 
I did two years of grad school on an air and mbp (both 13 inch). Its fine since portability is more important for me. I had a 24 inch display that I used at home when I need the extra space for research purposes. but man that 15 inch is big to carry around! 13 is perfect. plus with expose, managing multiple documents is a cinch. You can also play around with the word document's size, and if you are using pdfs, you can adjust that as well to put two document side by side.
 
You could get an external 24" monitor for when ya wanted to run things side by side. And you can still take your compact 13" to classes/lectures. Then to study at night you can hook it up to the 24":D
 
my friend has a 13" and i've seen him do multiple things on the screen with no clutter. thank you os x ;)
 
I definitely find the 16:10 resolution and app-swapping tricks in OSX make it a very productive mobile solution. I played around with a 14'' 16:9 res PC notebook the other day and found it just didn't have enough vertical space.

For the price, the Macbook or Macbook Pro 13'' is really more than enough for most students just researching & reading reports. The 17'' MBP might be a LITTLE better as far as screen space, but you're also sacrificing some battery life, and a big chunk of your bank account. :rolleyes: I would go for the MBP 13'' & a cheap $99-$150 monitor.
 
OS X's window management techniques and hot key combos allow you to multitask with multiple open apps easily no matter how small the display. The only hurdle is taking the time to learn all of them.
 
smelly cat said:
OS X's window management techniques and hot key combos allow you to multitask with multiple open apps easily no matter how small the display. The only hurdle is taking the time to learn all of them.
Click to expand...

this. although i'd like to be able to put 2 documents fully side by side, expose and spaces makes up for this. With expose, I can quickly sort through 10-20 apps and find the windows I need. All it takes is one swipe of my fingers too
 
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