Hey, an incoming analyst here who has gone through undergrad entirely on a mac. I got pretty into shortcuts and financial modeling in general over the summer and want to stay sharp. Does anyone have recommendations for a cheap laptop that would be used exclusively for ppt and excel? Bonus points for a full keyboard. Thanks
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Nice username btw
Just buy an external keyboard with a numpad and plug it into your Mac?
If you really want windows then do the above and dual boot or run a VM with a windows instance and a full keyboard (provided you have an Intel mac)
Other than that, any old windows machine that’s not too old should be able to run excel to a certain degree of performance.
If you’re really interested in buying a laptop, very few come with a full keyboard.
Cheap is relative. To a video editor, a cheap laptop may be $2000. To a high school student it may be a $200 Chromebook. What’s your budget?
Once you start working you very likely won’t be doing a tremendous amount of excel work on your laptop so will it just sit idly by?
If you give me a budget and some more specific parameters I can give you some options.
Yeah hoping for <300 and am comfortable with getting a bit over a semester use out of it. I have my mac boot camped and an external keyboard, but I prefer the mac user experience when not using excel/ppt, and it's kind of a pain to switch between.
Ok, thanks.
So you're probably going to have to buy used. Most 17" class business laptops have a numpad so something from HP, Dell, or Lenovo will be what you're looking for. Ebay is convenient but you'll find the best deals locally on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace.
As for specs I would strongly suggest you find something with an SSD. Get as much storage as you need. 256GB minimum, 512 recommended. Excel files aren't too big so if that's truly all you'll be doing 256GB will be plenty.
For RAM, I suggest at least 8GB with 16GB recommended. 16GB will help with very large sheets with lots of macros and formulas.
For the processor, you can go with an i5 or an i7 but I strongly suggest something starting with 8 (I.e. i7 8xxx) with 7xxx being the lowest I would go (2017 technology)
You can get a surprisingly proficiently spec'ed computer with $300, just don't expect to play video games on it. Something like this should be more than enough but I encourage you to look locally for deals and look on ebay a little longer, this was just the first thing I saw on ebay that didn't look like garbage. https://www.ebay.com/itm/204066291158
I’d scan local pages like Facebook Marketplace - I bought a PC that way when I was in your shoes and got a great deal on a nicer computer. I remember seeing a lot of solid deals too
Can you use a macbook in banking?
Definitely no.
You can technically run Windows on a Mac via Parallels + plug in an external keyboard... but that + your VDI will make the computer impossibly slow. Parallels works fine for college but you'll need a windows laptop once you start work (your company might provide this to you, some expect you to buy your own WFH setup but others will reimburse or loan laptops)
Why getting a new computer? Get a virtual desktop software/bootcamp and external keyboard no mouse tho, get the settings and hotkey right. It is essentially the same thing
Did you just say you want to buy a computer before starting to practice XLS shortcuts ???
Just wait until start, you will get plenty of oppprtunities to use PowerPoint and excel ..
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