Laptop Reccomendations for Modeling

Rising junior here that will be starting a summer internship with a private equity shop next week. I currently have a MacBook, which I have been told is not great for modeling in terms of excel shortcuts and plugins. I was wondering what some good recommendations for Windows laptops would be? I will be going into IB at a boutique bank next summer, not sure if they will be providing a laptop or not for my work then (input is appreciated).

14 Comments
 

Will you be working primarily in a dock or as a laptop?

Docked: * Buy a quality external keyboard, mouse and monitor. The computer brand itself matters less, just get lots of RAM and a big SSD.

Laptop * Prioritize a good, full sized keyboard as long as it fits within your bag. Thinkpad models (X and T models) are great. Microsoft Surface Book. I believe Dell's top of the line stuff has good reviews

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 

At $500 I would suggest buying used from eBay, Craigslist, your college websites, friends, etc. You probably could pick something up much nicer than what you could find new.

If has to be new, Acer Aspire or maybe Lenovo Ideapad?

Be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes.
 
Most Helpful
"nontargetscum"

Don’t get more than 16GB of RAM lol.

Are you smoking crack? I have a 16GB laptop for FactSet and a 16GB desktop for Bloomberg. RAM is normally the first thing that you run out of.

"Synergy_or_Syzygy" Docked: * Buy a quality external keyboard, mouse and monitor. The computer brand itself matters less, just get lots of RAM and a big SSD.

Agreed other than the SSD. You are unlikely to have significant storage requirements, and if you do, they should be making you put everything on a network drive for business continuity reasons. After five years I've only got 100GB of stuff on my (several times replaced) laptop.

The only difference between Asset Management and Investment Research is assets. I generally see somebody I know on TV on Bloomberg/CNBC etc. once or twice a week. This sounds cool, until I remind myself that I see somebody I know on ESPN five days a week.
 

If you're running out of 16GB of RAM you have horrible application management or are doing something else wrong. The only reason you need 32GB of RAM is if you're editing videos or something.

 

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