Two weird things I noticed (not specifically pertaining to Apple)

I read on some other thread once that a person was surprised how "the 17-inch MacBook Pro is only 0.03 inches thicker than the 15-inch" or something like that. This really surprised me because I thought that, since a computer is physically bigger, there should be physically more space inside to fit components, so, as computers get BIGGER, they shouldn't necessarily get thinner, but should definitely not get thicker. Stands to logic. However, I see with all computer brands (ex. Alienware) that as computers get bigger they also get much thicker. Why??

Also, I noticed that both the 13-inch, 15-inch, and 17-inch MBP's have the same battery life. Between the 13 and the 15, I guess that space goes towards the dedicated GPU in the 15, but what about the 17? It's bigger, the components are the same, so couldn't they have made the battery bigger to make the battery life maybe 8 or 9 hours? Again, stands to logic.

Anyone have any explanations?

 

Each model has a bigger screen that drains more battery so the 13" has a smaller battery than the 15" but both have the same battery life because of the screen size/resolution.

 

Originally, that's what I thought. However, does a screen really use that much battery? And how are the differences that perfect then?

 

For most non-compute-intensive tasks like surfing the internet, the screen is the biggest single power hog in a laptop. Especially with larger screens.

I'm going to assume that most of the extra space is being taken up by battery to support decent battery life with the larger screen. Something that supports this is that the MBP15 has a volume of 21600mm3, and the MBP17 26325mm3, or about 21% more. The size of the MBP17 battery is also about 21% more compared to the MBP15.

The only exception that I can think of now are that the 12 inch Thinkpad X220 (35mm) is thicker than all the other Thinkpad ultraportables (T420s is 26mm, X1 is 21mm). This still supports the "extra space is battery" theory since the X220 gets a lot more battery life compared to the others.

 

Have you seen the 15" and 17" MBPs up close in Apple store?

The reason 17" MBP is slightly thicker is because its screen is thicker. I guess they needed to make it thicker either due to rigidity or backlight reasons.

 

As stated, there's two major things going on:

1. bigger screen necessitates bigger battery, takes up some of the volume space that's available by increase the length and width of the body, without improving battery life.
2. bigger screen corresponds with larger, heavier body (width and length) - there may be structural constraints or targets that affect the resultant design height

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people are always surprised about how much energy it takes to drive a LCD screen with backlighting. Although it's much lower energy than CRT tech, it's still high energy

 

I am surprised that people aren't looking at the iPad 3 as a prime example. The battery in that thing is much, much larger than in the iPad 2 and the iPad 3 is also a little heavier (due to the battery) and a little thicker (again, the battery). It is the single most energy hog in the iPad 3's design and that has a lot to do with the backlight system. Either way, displays require much of the power coming from portable device batteries. Another example with the iPad 3 is that it can go for 50+ hours of straight music playback with the display turned off. It can also be used as an LTE wi-fi hotspot. Although that would normally kill the battery with the display on, turning it off drastically increases the battery life to over 25 hours. That is with the LTE radio on and wi-fi emitting a close range network. The display consumes more energy than wi-fi and the LTE radio.