I agree, a 17" laptop screen is very small, and is why I use two 24" monitors in my day job. But that's because the problems I work on are far more complicated these days.
Back in the day, 320x200 - 40 columns x 25 rows - Commodore 64 seemed OK, until I saw the hires mode on an Amstrad CPC 64 - with 640x200, giving 80 columns. All these were huge luxuries compared to the 20x1 LCD character screen I mention in another comment here, of course.
But the point is, the problems you'd tackle are smaller too. Just ad-hoc things: probably simple mashups using maps, GPS and connectivity; algorithm implementation to satisfy curiosity, or to learn in idle time, or even to brute force a puzzler in a newspaper column. There was an iPhone game, Fling, which I spent 20 minutes writing up a solver for, on my laptop. I'd have liked to do it on the phone instead.
Back in the day, 320x200 - 40 columns x 25 rows - Commodore 64 seemed OK, until I saw the hires mode on an Amstrad CPC 64 - with 640x200, giving 80 columns. All these were huge luxuries compared to the 20x1 LCD character screen I mention in another comment here, of course.
But the point is, the problems you'd tackle are smaller too. Just ad-hoc things: probably simple mashups using maps, GPS and connectivity; algorithm implementation to satisfy curiosity, or to learn in idle time, or even to brute force a puzzler in a newspaper column. There was an iPhone game, Fling, which I spent 20 minutes writing up a solver for, on my laptop. I'd have liked to do it on the phone instead.