MacBook Pro Retina 13" or 15" for grad school and which storage size?

Hi everyone! I'm new to forums but was hoping I could get some help. I'm in the market for a MacBook Pro retina, but am having trouble deciding on both screen and storage size. I am currently leaning toward the 15" 256mb. I will be using it for graduate school, mostly for word processing/ppt but a little bit of photo editing (using Photoshop). I don't store many videos or music and tend to store pictures on an external hard drive. The reason I thought I wanted the 15" is because I like to have 2 windows open at one time side by side, so I figured the 13" would be too small for this. I have an iPad 2 that I would probably use for class and note taking, but I may end up using my laptop so I can use Microsoft word-- that's where weight and portability will come in to play and is the reason why I am still considering the 13". As for the 15" I'm open to upgrading to the 500mb but don't know if this is really needed. I would really appreciate any insight, especially from students using one of these notebooks for class. Thank you!

"The reason I thought I wanted the 15" is because I like to have 2 windows open at one time side by side, so I figured the 13" would be too small for this. "
Apple's "Mission Control" feature allows you to open multiple desktops at once for the very reason you mention. You could have one window open in one and a second open in another. The trackpad additionally allows you to quickly switch from one desktop to another with a swipe of your fingers. This may not be preferable if you would still like to have all your open windows on one screen, but you quickly get used to the feature and once you utilize it, it turns out to be very beneficial and allows you to work with many open windows in an efficient manner.

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http://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201295
http://web.archive.org/web/20140711222006/http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379
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Any Change?
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Back up all data before proceeding.
This procedure will unlock all your user files (not system files) and reset their ownership, permissions, and access controls to the default. If you've intentionally set special values for those attributes on any of your files, they will be reverted. In that case, either stop here, or be prepared to recreate the settings if necessary. Do so only after verifying that those settings didn't cause the problem. If none of this is meaningful to you, you don't need to worry about it, but you do need to follow the instructions below.
Step 1
If you have more than one user, and the one in question is not an administrator, then go to Step 2.
Triple-click anywhere in the following line on this page to select it:
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Copy the selected text to the Clipboard by pressing the key combination command-C.
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JenJen25 wrote:
With the above in consideration, what screen size would be suitable? Deciding on the screen size is my main issue.
The best way to approach this is to visit an Apple store and look at the displays yourself. What others like or say may be very different from your preferences and they cannot reproduce you eyesight.
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I just had a few questions regarding the macbook listed above. i am a electrical engineering major, and need to decide on a new macbook to take to class with me. I have had my eyes set on a macbook pro 13" for a while, but need some conformations on the power it has.
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"It currently has 4GB and it very quickly runs out of memory meaning playback of goes very slowly when previewing complex files in the timeline."
"In this case yes, I can most certainly see a performance increase as your machine is still not too old and a RAM increase will help it for sure I just can't tell you by how much.
I own the same machine as yours (except for mine having 2.9ghz and i7, and 8GB of ram) so I think it's safe to say for me that the RAM increase will help you for sure."
That statement of mine answers your question you just asked

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MacBook Pro Retina 13" or 15" for grad school and which storage size?

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