Laptop Suggestions

I have a dinosaur of a laptop, which is at the end of its days. I need something light (jumping between home and the office) and that is fast (using mostly for valuation models with way too many tabs).

Most of my office is on Macs, but my bosses don’t spend their days in excel. I’ve heard you can install windows on a Mac but that is slows everything down. Would like to keep under $3,000 CAD if possible.

Any ideas? Thanks guys!

You should be able to get a Mac pro with that budget and bootcamp it. Sounds like a business expense to me, make the employer cough up the dough and get something high end.

Mac Pro or Macbook Air

There’s another thread on it somewhere. New MacBook Pro > Windows 10 > Office 360 > Parallels. Dunno what people are talking about it being slow and buggy, ultra fast and zero bugs doing very heavy Excel models here. It’s kind of confusing to set up, because it’s MS and they don’t understand people, but once it’s running it’s great.

Surface Book

Surfaces look really cool!

My gf does a ton of heavy data naalysis on hers she bought a a really nice Levnovo for like $1400US and thats crunching large data sets in SAS & R so id imagine that would handle excel fine. Ive used it for surfing the web and its great. Macs suck but if you are deeply into the Apple ecosystem you might as well

Apple is nice, but I don’t think it is worth the price premium generally. Disclaimer: I do own an iMac, which is my primary computer, but I installed Windows on it through Bootcamp, due to compatibility issues with some software I need. For my next computer, I think I will go with a higher spec model from a cheaper brand. It’s also a bit annoying that the partition deducts half your hard disk space, in addition to the space required to install the second operating system.

Portability and physical quality is becoming less of an issue nowadays anyway. Laptops in general are getting lighter - you’re not going to find many 5 pounders like years ago, and comparing a 2.7 pound vs 2.3 pound computer is much less significant than comparing a 4.5 pound vs 3.5 pound computer . Furthermore, most companies are making better quality cases than before. Dell or whoever made some truly crappy laptop bodies 10 years ago - much less today.

So, the differentiation factors for me are: 1) Keyboard, touchpad and joystick thing, 2) Screen quality, 3) External ports (USB number and placement, HDMI, mini display, etc.). I don’t care that much about battery life, since my laptops have been plugged in 95% of the time.

I was digging through my old stuff the other day, and I have a box with 5 Lenovo/Thinkpad laptops. So, I guess that’s what I tend to get.

On that budget you can pretty much get anything. I would go for the Lenovo X1 Carbon or the Dell counterpart. The premium on the Apple is quite high and you’re really paying for the OS (which I don’t find to be good or anything special - you are paying for it to be dummy proof), the screen, the finish. Plus they gouge you on the accessories and Mac-compatible software and have no HDMI outputs. If you have a solid understanding and ability to troubleshoot PC/Windows, there’s really no reason to go with a Mac. Sure, you could run Parallels, but you would have to ask yourself why you even want the Mac side at all, with the possibility of compatibility issues and reduced performance.

I have an 900$CAD Asus, it runs fine. My only gripe is windows 8, once it’s off waranty I’m going to wipe it and go back to W7.

Surface Book.

Or Surface Pro 4 but I think Surface Pro 5 might come out soon.

duuuuuuuuuuuuude, youre getting a dell!!!

Seconding Ramos4rm, atush: Surface Book

I have a $300 dell running Fedora. Gets the job done and everyone thinks you are a hacker, also carrying it is a good workout.

Dell XPS 13 or 15

Mac is for children

Thanks all - looked at the Surface Pro and it was too “tablet-y”. I want something that fares more like a laptop because I have an iPad for personal use. I’m looking at the Lenovo X1 Carbon and the Dell Precision, which seems quite expensive for a Dell (given every Dell I’ve had seems to totally crap out after two years)…

I’m too set in my ways to learn excel on a macbook, and I’ve heard even with Bootcamp/Parallels it’s not great. I’m risk adverse and don’t want to chance it, considering my life is mostly models and bottles, less the bottles. Heard the Surface Book was amazing, but my IT guy says it will cost closer to $4K with the specifications I need. That just seems wasteful.

Does anyone have the Lenovo X1 Carbon or the Dell Precision 5510?

+1…XPS 13 for the win!