Deciding between laptop screen resolutions

[Hawaiian Eskimo]

Hey guys. I'm looking at two different submodels of the Lenovo Thinkpad T520 here.

The one on the far left ($849) is the base model, and essentially the one that I was given for use at school. I really like it, and was thinking about buying one for home and college use, which would be the one immediately to the right ($1149).

The main differences between them that I'm concerned about is the resolution (1600x900 vs 1366x768), and the video card (Intel HD 3000 vs NVIDIA NVS 4200M). My questions are:
1. How small is the 1600x900 resolution going to make text appear on the 15.9" monitor? I can read text pretty small, but I was wondering if you guys have used a monitor at that resolution and have anything to say about it.
2. What's the main difference between the Intel graphics, and the "business" video card in the more expensive model? I'm not going to be playing any games on it besides ones with "casual quality" graphics (the laptop will mostly be for "work"), but how will it handle full HD video? I've never really understood the difference between consumer and professional graphics cards.

Lots of thanks for any input you have

[Samardnaz]

Not familiar with those two video cards specifically, but my past experience tends to support choosing the NVidia card over the Intel card. Faster, more reliable, higher resolution and frame rates. But then again, video memory has a lot to do with that also, which has the higher amount of onboard video memory?

As for text size, don't worry about it. If it gets too small, go into the Advanced portion of the display setup and choose Large Fonts.

[emax4]

I would go with the higher resolution if you really want it. I wouldn't worry about text being too too small because you can either decrease the resolution to make everything on the screen a little bigger, or simply increase the font size in whatever you're working in (web,word processor).

[Chromatix]

The last time I bought a laptop, I deliberately went for the highest resolution screen possible - 1920x1200 in a 17" format. I have never regretted it.

Most likely the Nvidia graphics card is there so that performance is still decent with the higher resolution screen. It's not a very good model, but it's pretty hard to get worse than the Intel built-in stuff. It should be able to handle video without any problems, just don't expect to play any more than casual games.