Designers: MBP 13" instead of a 15"?

[mangoman]

I'm a grizzled, jaded, seasoned design guy who's owned 15" MBPs for years. And I've spent nearly every work day with those 15" MBPs tethered to an external monitor.

Now in the market for a new MBP and wondering, Why not buy a 13", given the fact that the 13" is almost always a secondary monitor, save for the rare times that I actually use the laptop by itself, sans external monitor?

Any other design (or related) folks ever been in this position? Have an opinion about sticking with the usual 15" versus downsizing to a 13"?

 

[hamiltonDSi]

I'm not a designer but I worked 4 years with AutoCAD for school projects.
In those 4 years I owned two 13" MacBooks ; one was a Late 2008 Aluminium MacBook and one was a Late 2011 MacBook Pro.

Working in AutoCAD on a 13" was hard.

A couple of day ago I bought my first 15" Macbook Pro (Retina), and trust me, it's like a glass of cold water in hell. Lol.

If you plan on working when you are not hooked up to a external display don't buy the 13".

 

[Smeaton1724]

I've owned a 13, I tried and tried to get to grips with Autocad and Revit, I just couldn't - resolution great, speed ok (8GB ram bottlenecks on large projects aside), real estate was just too small!

In the end I sold the 13 retina, went the Quad Core Mac mini route and a 32 inch monitor.

Personally I wouldn't go my exact route again as I still need portability, but if you are always fixed at monitors save the £1000, or go the 27 imac route!