I am beginning my MBA in the Fall (ideally to get into investment banking) and need to get a decent laptop for the 2 years. I don't need a ton of features or memory (I rarely use my old laptop today). The Microsoft Surface 4 looks portable, easy to use, and if I buy the keyboard, functions like a regular laptop. Am I missing anything?
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I use it to model in excel. Love it. You'll need to get used to the slightly smaller keyboard but it works great. I have the docking station and plug it in when I work from home, it acts like my desktop at work.
I use a Surface as a laptop and it works fine for most things. The Surface keyboard for Excel is not the greatest. The function keys (F1, F2) are mapped to more general things by default (increasing volume, keyboard backlighting). You toggle to switch the function keys to what you are normally used to, but then you lose the Home, End, Pg Up, and Pg Dwn keys. Haven't found a solution around this yet...
Laptops generally suck for doing serious excel work (unless you get a large one and what is the point in that). Just dock the surface and use a normal desktop keyboard.
If you've got the cash to shell out, check out a Thinkpad, specifically the Thinkpad X1 Yoga. It has the power of the Thinkpad series with the flexibility and utility of the Yoga series. It flips 360 degress into a tablet, and when in tablet mode, it has a mechanism so that the keys go into the keyboard so the keys aren't being pressed. It's only incrementally bigger than the Surface (less than 2 inches), but definitely has more to offer.
i have a lenovo x1 personally but a bunch of my classmates have surfaces and they haven't had any issues. I agree with TNA, buy a monitor, keyboard, and wireless mouse and dock when you need to do serious excel work.
Then what's the point in paying 1000 bucks? Just get a desktop computer then! @TNA" was talking about a normal desktop keyboard, not a moniter.
OP, Lenovo and Dell laptops are some of the best windows laptops. I have the Yoga 900 and it's great! Just make sure you get a 15" laptop because the smaller ones don't have some keys.
I use a Surface at work. It's great for meetings, presentations, and travel. The other posters are absolutely correct that it sucks for financial modeling due to the small keyboard. If you don't have a regular monitor / keyboard which you can dock to then keep looking. I also find that it gets very hot and the battery life, while above average, is not as good as an Ipad or Macbook.
Thanks for your input. I'm confused - isn't the Surface itself a monitor? So wouldn't I just buy a keyboard and dock to make the Surface into a desktop like computer?
I have the Surface Pro 3 and its monitor is only 12". By comparison, my office dock has two 19" monitors. It's a hell of a lot easier to get work done with the two larger monitors, especially if you're doing modelling work.
You can get input work done on just the Surface, but if you're using it standalone ideally you're only taking notes or checking email.
Anyone have feedback on the slightly more expensive version: Microsoft Surface Book, which is an actual laptop?
I tried it, and while it was definitely cooler than my MacBook Pro, I think the next generation of SB will have a lot of small annoyances ironed out. It's what I'm waiting for.
Any feedback on HP laptops? hp spectre x360 seems much easier to carry then a Lenovo.....
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