12.1 Laptop versus 8.9 Netbook for school?

Hi and welcome to my blog,
I opened this blog to help anyone who is preparing for his SAT.
I remember myself when I started - I was so lost and in such a panic.
Luckily I got this great SAT guide that helped me a lot . So study hard and good luck!
Hey I will be a new university this year and need a laptop for school.
My current idea is to buy a small, light laptop for in-class/school use and keep a separate bigger monitor + keyboard/mouse in my dorm and hook up the laptop to those via a dock.
I was thinking between a subnotebook (netbook) at a tiny 8.9 inches or a 12.1 inch laptop. The 8.9 is ultralight but the keyboard is not full size and therefore not comfortable for long typing, while the 12.1 is bigger/heavier but has more power, RAM, memory full keyboard etc.
All my classes are geography (non-science) and I don’t use a computer for much more than Word, Powerpoint, internet and music.
So would you be able to tell me which laptop would you recommend. Would the subnotebook (tiny 8.9 inch) be too small to act as my main computer, and from your experience is a non-full size keyboard (the subnotebook has a 95% size keyboard) too uncomfortable to use?
Thanks for your help!
The netbooks don’t always run Windows. Many run Linux. I would say go with the 12.1 for Windows/the extra power.