so me and my posse only go for 12″. laptops, that is. while I have involuntarily spread a Macintosh epidemic among my peers - many of which have never dreamt of owning a Mac - a particularly interesting trend has evolved: most were more than happy to go for the smallest form factor available. 12″ or 13.3″ models [sold two friends on them, a third is coming up]. not enough people to get a real survey going on. so:

• one non-geek, student, self-proclaimed techno-dummy. hasn’t called me beyond helping her with Office, life goes smoothly. not the kind of person that watches movies or does anything that would warrant a large display anyway, so being portable was the seller [albeit the MacBook isn't the lightest of laptops, it certainly isn't that big]
• non-geek, student, knows a few things [my direct geekness has rubbed on this lovely lady.] in prospect to buy a MacBook, 13.3″ 12″ machine. very upset that the new Macs are 13.3″, actually. doesn’t care about size that much because she can do her work just fine.
• half-geek, computer literate. owns a 13.3″ MacBook. probably because he can use his 21″[comments below] 20″ LCD at home whenever need be for something bigger.
• me. 12″ iBook owner. love being able to balance it on a knee and type anywhere. wanted specifically this form factor [which is kind of why I originally ended up buying a Mac] got a 22″ LCD for coding and movies that I can expand this display on if I really need to.

So what trends are we seeing here? Girls revolve around the 12″-13″ mark. Typical. Though they do not need anything in addition to that and are quite satisfied with said…. diagonal. Guys? Well we’re geeks and know better than to be as superficial as to measure our manliness in laptop screen sizes. But just to be sure, we’re packing something big for back-up, possibly extra machines at home.