Buying a desktop PC or laptop?

Got all of the Wall Street Prep material and also will be taking an unaffiliated course that requires MS windows 7,8, or 10. Basically I just need a pc or laptop for MS office and WSP. I have a macbook air but I know I desperately need to familiarize myself more with windows because every firm uses it. Any recommendations for a laptop or desktop "tower" to get? I actually have a monitor, mouse, and external keyboard so I would think buying a tower would be cheaper? Would prefer to spend 1000-1500 max.

27 Comments
 

If you go on slickdeals.net, you can find great deals on both desktop PCs and laptops. I'm impartial to the tower, since you already have the Macbook. You can pick up an HP Pavilion with an i5 and 8-16 GB of RAM for less than ~600.

If you really wanted a laptop, I'd say get a Lenovo Thinkpad since that's what everyone else I've worked with has used. But the one I had was absolutely terrible and had every issue under the sun, so I'm against that. I've heard great things about the X1.

 

I have the macbook air laptop so I thought maybe the tower would be a good idea since they are usually cheaper (I I have all the peripheral devices)? Either way I think you gave some solid suggestions.

 

I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (my work laptop) and have personally done Wall Street Prep on it. I've been very satisfied with it. I've also heard that the Surface Book is very good if you want more of a traditional laptop and less of a tablet. However, I will say I had two external monitors and a docking cord so that I wasn't just working on the one little screen.

 

If you don't need processing power get a net book and a big monitor to plug into it. Then you can use the monitor for your mac as well or use a work laptop with it, or upgrade the netbook down the line...

 

Update: Ended up getting a pc tower from the Website lebron mentioned. Windows 7, 8 gb RAM, i7 processor, and I got office 365 from my school. All-in cost was 600 bucks. I Already had a decent logitech mouse and keyboard so I decided to go with that since the keyboard and mouse that came with the pc were pretty lame. Also had a monitor so that saved me ~100 bucks.

Now I just want to get a headset so I don't have to use my iPhone headphones. The tower has a built-in speaker but the sound is way too quiet.

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