Even with a really great setup, "studies" have shown that most people really can't even tell the difference on "really great setups."
On the 17", that's a different issue. It still looks great, but because the resolution is so great (1920x1200), you're better off with 1080p. The resolution on the 17" is higher than 1080p, so even 1080 would have to "expand" to fit all of the pixels. There will be some quality loss on fullscreen, but nothing noticeable at all.
1080p would look great on ever laptop, because it would "shrink" to fit the pixels on screen, which would make everything look extremely crisp. Think of opening up a blurry image (or even a crisp one) in photoshop, and shrink it. It almost always looks better and sharper.