Switching from a MacBook to PC notebook
I'm pretty illiterate when it comes to specs on a laptop and would love to get some insight for you on here that are in IB and what you would recommend for me to purchase before i start FT in July
No price limit per se but not looking to buy something over $1100 really (i've seen some solid HPs for like $650-ish and that was a 750G hard-drive with 6GB RAM i believe- i could be mistaken on the hard-drive might have misread it..oh well lollll)
Feel free to post links and tell me what you'd recommend! I cant fucking stand clicking everywhere in Excel and PowerPoint on my Mac and i've had enough. Shortcuts were created for a reason and Steve Jobs apparently didnt realize that :=(
Thanks yall!!
Be careful not to focus on performance specs only. It's easy to end up with a powerful piece of junk that's heavy, noisy, has poor thermal design and low battery life.
You don't need an excessively powerful computer for Excel and PowerPoint, so focus on other aspects.
Lenovo makes really good stuff (durable, well-designed systems with not too much crap-ware installed). I would avoid HP personally...
This. The Lenovo T series is a great bet! It's not the most visually appealing line up, but it's designed to stand up to a tough duty cycle.
Also, if you're not a complete retard, there are ways you can save money. For example, the biggest profit margins for OEM are: - RAM upgrades - HD upgrades
What I ended up doing was finding a great deal on RAM through Slickdeals and replaced the crap-tastic HD with a SSD when it was on sale.
Thanks, i'll take this into consideration and hit up slickdeal for options this week. appreciate the comment
Why do you want a PC? Why don't you just get something like BootCamp for your Mac, so you can run Windows on it, then install Microsot Excel? I hate Windows, and if you have seen the "new" Windows 8, you'll know what I'm talking about. PC's are a joke, MSFT is going down the shit hole, and screw Bill Gates.
Pardon me, sir, but you're a retard.
These days a PC Hackintosh is better than a Mac itself, just ask former Mac users. OP, I'm not sure why you want to spend over $1,100. Go to TigerDirect.com and cruise their laptops. I've bought about a dozen from them over the years and they've all been beasts. I pay around $500 apiece for a laptop and replace it every 24 months.
If you can't stand to be away from the Apple OS, here's how to make a PC a Hackintosh without losing any of its PC goodness:
http://www.hackintosh.com/
If there's one thing the previous commenter is correct about, it's Windows 8. I'd buy a Windows 7 machine and let Windows 8 marinate for a little while before converting over. New Microsoft operating systems are always a nightmare early on.
I'm loving the TigerDirect.com man. Just took a look and already found some great. Thanks for the share :)
No.
One last thing: take a hard look at the Acer laptops. I've been rocking an Acer laptop for the past couple years and the thing is absolutely fucking bulletproof. I know they're perceived to be lower quality (hence the considerably lower price tag), but I've had fantastic service from mine. I recently bought two Acer C-7 Chromebooks from Tiger Direct, and now I'm going back to a desktop. The Chromebook is powerful enough to completely replace my laptop and it was only $199, so now I'll do my power computing on a desktop and have the Chromebook for my on-the-fly shit. It even fits (albeit a tight fit) in the case I use for my tablet. Very portable.
In short, I'm not recommending a Chromebook for your everyday computer even though I could get away with it. But my point is Acer puts out some quality stuff at a really low price and I've been really satisfied with them.
Just saw this one on Tiger Direct. It's a refurb, but I've never had a problem with that. Plus it's an Asus, which is top quality. Pretty beastly for $449:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-Details.asp?Ed…
I know what you mean, man. Been running Mac for many years now and would just love Microsoft Office to be NEARLY as easy to use/practical on Mac as it is on PC. It mind boggles me how shitty the Mac versions are.
I never knew some people in this industry would be so cheap in buying electronics. Acer, really? I'd be ashamed just to open it in front of clients in meetings etc.
Anyway, yeah, MacOffice sucks, but mac is better in everything else Im doing out of the office. Its always good to have 3, a PC, a windows notebook and a mac.
LOL. Like most other things in life, it's not the brand that matters but what you're able to do with it. I have a crapped out Dell that I converted to Linux that would probably smoke your Mac.
yea man I dont give a shit about your linux either. And to clarify, I use both platforms, Mac and Windows, simply because Mac is useless (not a fan of bootcamp) for work. But my windows wont be in a Acer because I can do better than that.
Right... For all those situations where you'd be using a personal laptop in front of clients.
Fucking retard.
Yeah, I'm sure the old ass executive across the table from you who can barely open up Outlook is going to care about your machine. Only overpay for a Mac if your clients are a bunch of hipsters and all of your meetings are at Starbucks.
To be fair, hipsters don't hang out at Starbucks, even with their new "blonde roast" coffee, which I'm sure still tastes like burnt urine. You'll find hipsters at spots like Think Coffee, Joe Coffee, Gimme Coffee, or Cafe Grumpy. Unfortunately, those places are really good.
Buy an ASUS
asus and lenovo are beasts!
There's some good advice here insofar, and hopefully I can add something to the mix. One thing that's important to remember is that the actual architecture of an apple machine is about the same as a windows machine (i.e. they both commonly use an intel chip set and share many architectural characteristics). So, if you have an apple machine you like, you can compare (pardon the pun) apples to apples with a given PC.
In general, in terms of specs to consider, the most important thing (in my opinion) you can invest in is a fast hard drive. Solid state drives are incredible but sometimes they can get pricey. A 7,200 RPM HD is a good cost-effective drive, but won't be nearly as good (I'm not sure if you can buy 10k and 15k drives for a laptop, if so, obviously, that would be better). RAM is also a consideration worth making, but in my experience, it's not worth it to sacrifice a good HD for better RAM. I've seen many machines out there with 8GB of DDR3 RAM but some POS 5,400 RPM HD. Don't fall into that trap.
You're making a good decision here, Apple makes a decent machine, but they're overpriced by a factor of two. I can't imagine why anyone would buy one for reasons beyond, "it looks pretty". Just my $0.02.
I'd have to agree on ASUS and Lenovo for notebooks, definitely the best for pre-built.
What you should look for is a non-integrated (dedicated) graphics card and dual-core at the very least. You're not going to be running any high-end games on a laptop, so that should serve you well. Integrated graphics are the worst since they eat into the CPU usage and aren't dedicated to rendering, well, graphics. You can easily find a decent laptop w/ the above specs for ~$600-700.
Spec-wise, don't get too crazy. It's a laptop, not a gaming rig. Quiet fans and good airflow are essential for a laptop to not overheat/shut down on you.
If you want to look and feel cool, you don't need to spend five thousand bucks on a big mac. Just get some mutton chops and a doo-rag.
Honestly, if you're starting FT in July, I would recommend going for a desktop rather than a laptop. You end up getting a whole lot more for your money, and you can build out your machine to custom specifications.
Post-college, especially if you're working in IBD, you're just not going to have much of a use for the mobility of a laptop. Switching to a desktop was definitely one of the better decisions I've made.
In the past, I've always built my own desktops but I'm moved away from that. I've never really been a gamer so a desktop didn't have any particular feature that I did not have with a laptop.
My personal set up is my Lenovo T530 sitting on top of a port replicator which allows me to have two 27" IPS LCD displays. And if I need the mobility, I can just take it off the port replicator and it's good to go. I don't have to ever worry about sync'ing my critical data between two machines since I use the laptop exclusively.
My Lenovo T530 with an quad core i7, 8gb of RAM, and a Vertex 4 SSD is plenty fast enough.
Since I don't have to worry about replacing both a desktop and a laptop, this just means I can replace/upgrade my laptop twice as frequently. I end up passing off my retired laptops to my parents.
I use a Lenovo X230-series laptop, which I'm very happy with and more than satisfies my mobility uses. I used to dock this laptop connected to a pair of 27" IPS displays, but decided to go back to building a desktop tower recently - I'll never look back.
For just barely more than my laptop, I built a 3.5 GHz i7 Ivy Bridge quad core processor, 32 GB of DDR3 RAM, 240 GB SSD + 500 GB back-up disk, a 2GB GeForce GTX graphics card and a DVD drive (which my laptop lacks). From this machine, I can drive my monitors at 2560x1440 resolution and have a computer that runs faster than anything I've ever experienced. Even my friends' $2,500+ Macs don't hold a candle in terms of speed.
The value of building your own tower just can't be beaten.
I might be the only one, but I feel like like using OSX shaves a few seconds/minutes off of every mundane computer task compared to Windows which adds up to a lot of productivity - so when I have to use Excel with ActiveX controls, etc. I just open a Wibdows 7 VM or dual boot.
I don't know what kinds of Windows computers you are using. Plus, using Macs prevents MS Office shortcuts - that's just unacceptable.
Probably gonna get some monkey shit from bowibowi for this one, but I just bought this bundle yesterday for $624.99 and it includes a 23" monitor:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Ed…
Available for about 5 hours before it sold out. You gotta be quick.
I actually have an Acer desktop with almost the exact same stats, and I paid over 2000 clams for it. Granted, this was about three years ago and I bought it from a brick-and-mortar establishment, but as they say, if if you can't spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table...
Three years ago that was a state of the art machine, so at least there's that.
Geez people, didn't I mention that I use windows too for office needs? Both of my PC and working notebook use windows, as other have mentioned MacOffice sucks. I'm talking about Acer for front office role, I don't know what kind of clients you meet but mine are quite classy to spot cheap stuff.
And Mr. Braverman, unfortunately I don't give a damn shit about linux and all your obsession with cheap-yet powerful machines.
By front office you mean the Dean's office, I assume?
Your assumption is not correct. What is your job man? IT guy? If thats what you do then it kinda make sense.
Can we just agree that Macs suck?
Haha wow this has been very entertaining/helpful at the same time. appreciate the info and comments, i'll hopefully be buying something this weekend
Not to mention that your name sounds Guidoish, but Im not American so not so sure about that.
Going out on a limb here, but if anyone wants to build a computer from a kit, this one is the shizz and TigerDirect just sent me a coupon code for another $50 off at checkout to the first 400 sold:
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Ed…
Coupon Code: SZT85996
Nice sites to have bookmarked are slickdeals.net and techbargains.com. I'm always browsing for a good deal.
Sed ex illum animi doloribus. Ut qui deleniti culpa quo.
See All Comments - 100% Free
WSO depends on everyone being able to pitch in when they know something. Unlock with your email and get bonus: 6 financial modeling lessons free ($199 value)
or Unlock with your social account...
Quia expedita voluptates suscipit est. Rerum ratione aliquid sed aut veniam exercitationem deleniti. Dolor et aut quia ut accusamus quidem dolores.
Vero dignissimos ut velit maiores. Consequatur modi esse iste id recusandae inventore corporis. Rerum voluptas voluptatem quam voluptatem officiis. Sunt voluptate et eveniet provident.
Est quis excepturi nemo non magni. Sed est voluptatem aliquid voluptatibus temporibus. Explicabo consectetur eaque fuga qui dolorem. Omnis est laborum velit facere ab dolore incidunt. Quos qui dolor explicabo velit.
Dicta debitis explicabo aliquid necessitatibus quia. Molestiae blanditiis voluptas id fugiat illo. Magni placeat ducimus illum.