Please help: Macbook vs a Windows laptop for College
Hello, I'm starting college in the fall and I have to purchase a new laptop now just because my current one is dying on me. I'm debating between the MacBook Air M2 or some windows laptop such as a Thinkpad x1 Carbon gen 9. The reason for such indecisiveness is because of the excel factor. I know that excel and other office apps do not run to their full potential on Mac and this will make it harder to learn excel for IB. However, laptop quality in the MacBook is far superior and that's what gets me. Any recommendations on what to do? Thank you so much.
little life tip for you: all of corporate america uses windows. mac OS is literal dogshit. get a dell, learn shortcuts, you'll thank me later
Windows windows windows. A Mac might be good for “fun” but it’s a headache to use for professional/school work and you’ll relearn everything once you graduate cause every firm short of some tech startup uses Windows
Thanks for the response. Any laptop recommendations?
Dell XPS or HP Envy series laptops should be fine. Your school should/might recommend a certain level of CPU and RAM so pay attention to that. Also look for reviews about durability, because you’ll use it every day and transport it all over the place.
Alright will look into it. Thanks a lot for your help. Much appreciated
Just a different point of view, I’ve been using Mac since it became a thing including during university
Before my first internship I simply used the stationary computers provided by the university to practice some excel and PowerPoint - everything else came very quickly during the internship. Ended up getting a 9/10 on technicality (computer skills / speed basically) in my final review.
Could be good to know since Windows laptops actually suck to use, while a good windows stationary computer is far superior than everything else
Thanks for your input. I totally agree with you. I feel like MacBooks are superior to windows laptops but my worry arises when I think about having to use a laptop in class for excel or just on my own time. That’s why it’s so hard to choose right now. Plus, this would be my first time on MacOS.
I’m not sure how much excel you use in the US, in Sweden I’ve used it like 1 time during 1.5 years so it doesn’t really matter to us. Plus if I want to play with excel I just use the computers at school. I feel like it’s a worth trade off considering I don’t have suffer through using a windows laptop on my free time haha.
Anyway, I’m sure it’ll be fine either way m8. You’ll learn most things in the beginning of an internship anyway
Don’t forget to put your sorority letters on the back of your MacBook and fill up your pink hydro flask before grabbing your morning vanilla latte.
I laughed but for every $1,000 you could have invested in Apple when "Legally Blonde" came out and Elle Woods had the only MacBook at Harvard Law school (this was literally a joke in the movie), you would have over $500,000. If you had $50k to invest you would have $25mm
I like HP and Lenovo laptops but I really don't think the companies themselves are better than Apple
Sure - they were able to take over the market, but not necessarily on functionality. Fine for other types of roles/industries I guess, but OP is asking on a finance-centric forum - we’re not exactly using our devices like most people who have a MacBook.
Thinkpad gang
Also strongly recommend an external full-sized mechnical keyboard with a numpad. Anything from mechanicalkeyboards website is pretty good, e.g. Leopold, Ducky, etc.
I’ve had 2 HP Envy’s, love them both. If you have the money, would recommend splurging for 16 GB RAM and a decent professor.
I have the 17”, makes the battery life significantly shorter but I think it’s worth it.
I’m actually looking into the Envy right now. Thanks for the recommendation
also recommend asus expertbook. definitely not as well known on the street but i can go a whole day without charge, relatively modest price point for latest i7 processor, 16gb ram, and 1T SSD ($1000 CAD on sale at costco)
Depends on your budget but if you are considering the last MacBook as an option and you are searching for a fancy laptop with good finition, Surface is probably the way to go.
If you find a performing laptop with a page up/page down it is probably the most useful thing lacking on most computer: time safer when going through tabs on Excel or even Chrome
I’m looking into the M1 or M2 model MacBooks but I think I might go with the thinkpad x1 carbon gen 9
Deciding between a Windows and MacBook for IB is like choosing between a Gucci suit and a Walmart tuxedo. Sure, they'll both get the job done, but one of them just looks and feels way better
MacBooks are far superior in terms of quality but I feel like windows might be the way to go for finance because of the office compatibility. Especially excel
I have a lenovo thinkpad x1 carbon and I find the quality to be far superior to my macbook pro.
Sure, the macbook feels like a block of aluminium but that doens't equate to quality.
You would have gotten more girls with that mac a decade ago. Now that is no longer the case.
If you are worried about "build quality" buy a thinkpad with a carbon magnesium frame and be done with it. If you really want to go deep into the Thinkpad culture buy a 10 year old thinkpad with the 7 row keyboard and upgrade the hardware to a quadcore processor and more ram. This will really make you cool and the thing will survive being driven over by a tank so you will be good there.
For sure, thanks so much for the advice. I just made my decision to get a thinkpad x1 carbon.
I personally would recommend at T series. The X1 Carbons are more expensive, but also as of late have had issues with their component quality. The T series is built like a tank and is designed specifically for business travel. The T14s lines are lighter than the T14 non s lines as well.
Get a Mac man. Windows is a pain to deal with on a laptop (for school). I've had them before and they simply don't compare to Macs when it comes to ease of use and security (most viruses aren't written for MacOS).
During undergrad I did the bulk of my excel work in the library on a desktop because I wanted the larger monitors anyway. During one of my internships my Sr. Director was blown away with my excel skills / fluency (standing next to my desk when I needed to make changes to models). It's not rocket science to be able to use shortcuts fluently. 3 days tops and you'll have the majority of them down.
If you don’t mind, can you please tell me why you preferred a Mac and how it served you well compared to a windows laptop? I appreciate it a ton
A few functional benefits (off the top of my head): far longer battery life (generally), airdrop, and iMessage.
Plus, (as I shared below), optics matter. If you plan on rushing or talking to girls in class, it will benefit you to blend in. As much as people in this thread seem to dislike it, Macs are the college norm and are basically seen as "best practice."
Outdated study but here's Cornell saying 70% of people use Macs in college: https://blogs.cornell.edu/info2040/2012/11/05/macs-for-the-win-for-coll…;
Here's another piece from KState: https://www.kstatecollegian.com/2021/12/21/here-is-why-71-percent-of-co…
The virus thing is no longer true. There is relative parity in terms of the market share, and it is likely higher on the macos side due to the relative wealth/lack of sophistication of the user base. As for it being hard to deal with windows in the universtity environment, wtf are you talking about? 90% of the interface is web based and therefore utilizes platform agnostic interfaces. If you are talking about programming classes then sure there is maybe some advantage to using the native code editing software tools in macos but otherwise there is zero difference.
Re: viruses - I'd have to look into the numbers. Functional benefits of a Mac: generally far, far longer battery life, airdropping, iMessage off the top of my head. Plus, you aren't the guy showing up where 99% of the class has a Mac with a windows PC. Optics matter.
Get a Mac for college, period.
You won’t have to bring the stupid charger with you everyday if you charge it the night before.
For those excel shortcut cult club monkeys, are you actually using excel in school everyday? I highly doubt it. And even if you do, literally there are window desktops around the school everywhere.
Most importantly, a parallel desktop on your Mac just does the job if you get the settings right. But you can’t do it the other way around(Ik Ik technically you can, but most finance hardos on wso won’t even bother to try bc it is a pain in the ass process and there are many potential problems)
I’d love a MacBook but everyone says how important excel shortcuts are and I’m just afraid of being behind everyone in the competition as a result
Who cares man? During any firms training, they will give you a laptop or virtual desktop software. The training will get you up to speed really fast if you put the time in. Me and some of my friends all have MacBooks and we never had any problems.
And, if you were to rlly get a windows laptop, don’t get dell. The QC is dog shit for 15/17’ laptops. Get the Microsoft laptops. Better quality and cheaper price.
With how cheap used thinkpads are you can legit do both on any reasonable laptop budget. Have a $1500 budget get a m2 macbook air with 16gb of ram for $1300 with a student discount and then get a used ~$200 thinkpad. I think you will actually end up using the thinkpad more than you think.
The reason people are saying buy a windows machine is because it will force you to be in the system and you will actually learn HOW to use it rather than just memorize a bunch of shortcut keys in excel. Being able to use the system is just as important as being able to know how to use specific programs. Navigating the file system, interfacing software systems, knowing how to manipulate files that are not in an ideal file type, etc. are all important things to know that you won't get from using excel on school computers and you might learn dual booting a mac but it is unlikely because it is easier to just do these things in the native system as it takes multiple steps to get to the windows environment.
1) Charger argument isn't entirely relevant because it depends on what kind of laptop you have in the first place. Some are simply more power efficient than others.
2) Not going to argue about using it everyday for Excel until after graduation and in the workforce. But if you had a windows laptop in the first place you wouldn't need to find some desktop and then mess with how do I transfer my work. Because it would just be already there on your laptop.
3) Lastly, if I really wanted to run MacOS (for some unknown reason) I can always Hackintosh it and dual boot with that. And don't forget with this magic called a VM I can run any OS I want on my windows machine. Kind of parallel to Parallels.
yeah exactly. Im looking into a thinkpad x1 carbon
Respect your pts. But I still have something to say
1) a windows 15-17’ laptop with real long battery hrs is unheard of(unless you don’t use any software, excel eats memory card hard) because that’s how two different systems are designed. One is simply more optimized than the other.
2)I agree with you. I used to have a windows laptop and being able to use excel on there whenever is great. BUT. The screen is small and using a desktop with dual monitors(most business schools have that) is way better than any laptops, and they have Bloomberg built in.
3) running macOS parallel on windows is way less prevalent and if you dual boot it, there are many potential problems with constant system crashes due to hardware specifications. But running windows parallel on a Mac is way more common and it is becoming better as time goes on.
In conclusion, getting a Mac is more applicable to every college student especially if you have iPhone and an iPad(the experience is butter smooth). But if you are rlly windows
FTW, nothing wrong with it either. You can do a lot of fun things with windows that Mac can be never do. Hope this helps
Mac
If you’re going into finance and IB windows for sure, the Alt codes alone and the shortcuts is worth it for any office suite program, especially Excel. Dell and Thinkpads are both good, X1 carbon is a good choice, if you want a pen you can get the X1 Yoga, it’s more expensive but you can use it as a 2 in 1 tablet as well. The battery life will be worse though and I think RAM is soldered on Thinkpads meaning you can’t upgrade afterwards, but I doubt you need more than 8GB for university stuff unless you also game, in which case the 16GB RAM /256 GB SSD should be more than sufficient. Go on their websites and see if there’s deals for back to school or spring sale, best deals are usually in November for cyber Monday though and then back to school. Good luck.
I used a MacBook for school and wouldn’t get another Mac again. Just go with Windows and know you can do everything with it
It depends on how much of a power user of those programs you are.
If you are a power user of office you will need a Windows machine. For Excel there is no PowerPivot on Mac for example and also there is no Access in the Office suite.
I prefer Windows because I like the OS better and you can get a lot more for your money on the computer.
Hope this can help you.
windows of course, no place to doubt
you obtain the same (or higher performance) for a lower price
If you plan on using it for gaming, absolutely get a windows laptop. I used a Windows laptop in college, but in my professional life, I use a MacBook. Macs tend to be better for productivity.
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