new laptop recommendations

what personal laptop do you guys use/recommend? I'm looking to buy a new one now (currently have a 2014 macbook air). With working starting in a few months I thought it would be a good idea to practice modelling and stuff and unfortunately all the shortcuts and stuff I did at internships doesn't transfer well to my mac's keypad. I would prefer something that is as cheap as possible (want to save for nyc rent) but will still do the work but don't mind paying a bit more for something that will last me long

 
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I was in your exact shoes - old laptop about to start full time. Decided to get an iPad Pro knowing that my bank will provide a laptop and I wouldn't have a ton of free time to really a personal laptop anyway.

Tons of people at my bank also have iPads for a sort of personal extra screen at their desk for things like streaming music/podcasts/sports while they work, as well as taking notes with the Apple Pencil in meetings that are easier to share. I've never seen anyone bring in a personal laptop though

I still have my old laptop that I keep in my apt for personal things that I need a legit keyboard for, but I find that most of what in my free time (netflix, reddit, this website) the iPad is perfect

When it comes to practicing modeling - yeah excel is trash on a Mac, but have you tried installing Windows on a seperate partition? I'm sure your school has free copies as well as free Microsoft for Windows copies - I don't think it's very worthwhile to invest too much in something that you will use a lot less than you might thin

 

It is the E490s, but I added some components to the base model. 16GB instead of 8GB, 512GB SSD instead of 500GB HDD and intel core i5 instead of i3. I bought it about a year ago, now they are even cheaper. Looking at the website, the new model is the E14, which with all the upgraded options is about $900. I think I got an extra 20% off because of the .edu student email address too.

 

Recently got a Microsoft Surface 3 for about 900 that works pretty well. My reason for getting a laptop was the same as yours: have an older MacBook and wanted to practice in excel before hitting the desk.

 

you bought a surface 3 for $900? Dude that’s overpaying out your ass

 

I think a Microsoft Surface is solid for modeling and it’s pretty practical. The cheapest one is the SurfaceGo and it has all the abilities for modeling under 500$. You can get a used MacBook Pro for around that price and it has all the ports available with the ecosystem you’re used to, but at least the performance is better. There are tons of great options from Dell and HP too, but they don’t seem to last as long with the updates.

Array
 

I recently in this situation as well. I was deciding between Lenovo computers, and I went with the Yoga C930. It's super versatile and has great internals (depending on what you pick) for a lower price. I have no complaints thus far, and I would recommend it.

Anytime I'm purchasing technology, I check CNET ratings. I would check them out too.

 

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