I want to buy a new laptop (my current is an old Dell).
My requirements are usual for a combo use of work and personal (not employed currently, I work from home sometimes):
Excel should work fast without getting stuck (I plan on taking advanced financial modeling courses)
good screen with good colors and resolution
good sound
mid-range budget
I hate small screens so screen size should be at least 14".
I don’t carry my laptop around much so weight doesn’t matter much.
I am eyeing dell inspiron 15" so far. Anyone uses it? It might have an old school feel to it though. The separate number pad is a plus. Obviously, Dell XPS 15 looks amazing but it is a little too costly for my use and placement of webcam is a turn off.
There is no better laptop than rMBP 15’. It meets all criteria instead budget limit. What is mid-range budget? Is it $1000, $2000 or $3000. For less than $1000 you might buy only garbage, not a laptop. MS Excel 2016 for Mac is OK but due to some limits may not be the best solution for your needs. You may install Windows on virtual machine (I’d recommend Parallels desktop) and use Windows Excel in full capacity. You may also install Windows on dual boot but I wouldn’t recommend so. I have several VMs installed with Windows and Linux OS on my two rMBPs.
I think Mac laptop with Windows installed is the best combination of ergonomics and functionality. In fact, I’m using such a computer right now. For the price though, I’m not sure if it’s worth it. You can probably get a higher spec machine for the same money by just buying Lenovo or something.
Really? I keep hearing bad reviews about lenovo in general. That it is not durable and it has bad speakers. By personal use I also meant entertainment as I watch shows and movies on my laptop so I certainly need good speakers.
That’s why I will always prefer PC rather than laptops. Having 2x 23" wide 16:9 screens next to each other are the best for working, gaming, movies or whatever shet you like. Of course a laptop is handy, so it is a tablet.
The same principle of giant screens has been applied to smartphones, and it is going crazy !!
ASUS has models for pretty much every price point, so you can work your way down the hardware/price frontier til you find something you want. Have had good experiences with mine for excel and movie watching, reliable, good battery life, excellent price. Lived on it for 2 years at grad school. My only gripe was that it came with Windows 8.
the yogas are like a mac at a third of the cost. Mine is probaby 4 years old now and it is fine. my work yoga is only a few months old and its specs are amazing
I had one and the lid broke after 6m. Afterwards, I found it’s a global issue within series. They try to copy MacBookPro with its Zen series but is far away from MBP quality.
^mine was about 1/3rd the price and outperformed my school buddies MBP using Parallels. i didn’t have any hardware issues at my trim level but the name of the series escapes me at the moment. It was considered one of the more premo trims though (intel i7, nvidia)
I don’t know about those Yoga Series or other super compact laptops, but I’ve always found the normal ThinkPads to be quite solid. The keyboard is the best of all laptops, in my opinion, and the little red dot thing is really useful.
I think the industry is more competitive now though. The gap between Lenovo and Dell or others is probably much smaller now.
^^ Now I see you compare genuine Windoze machine with MBP using Windows on VM.
Of course, VM cannot outperform high class genuine OS machine about two simply reasons. 1. Resources are divided between guest and host OS. You choose how much resources you want to add to each installed VM but if to much is allocated, your host OS (OS X) will get slower. Another reason, guest OS uses host machine resources by bypass via VM drivers, in this case Parallels drivers. Guest has no direct access to psychical host resources.
The beauty of using VMs is in fact I am able to switch between Windoze, OS X and Debian OS immediately. Mac Trackpad works fine on all VMs and I cannot say same for Asus trackpad which, IMO, is a joke. Also, I do not need Asus bloatware preinstalled with OS.
Another advantage, when things gone wrong, I simply delete entire Windows VM and then simply copy paste from backup. The whole process is taking about 30 minute for about 180 GB virtual Win HD. I use virtual environment pretty much for various testing. It is sandboxed from host OS and thus the risk to harm machine is low.
As much as I need Windows, the virtual environment is quite enough and Parallels work very well. If you need Windoze laptop for gaming, MAC with virtual guest OS might not be the best solution, rather choose a genuine one.
Last but not least, I’d say you compare Apples and Oranges. You should compare rMBP performance with integrated and discrete GPU, 2.6 GHz Intel Core i7 with Asus UX303LA working in native (host) OS only. I was pretty happy when lid broke on my working machine Asus UX303LA. I gave it to the child and purchase myself another rMBP.