Best Brand of Laptop for MBA

Someone above mentioned this, but you really might want to reconsider buying Apple products if you're going to do anything even remotely related to heavy spreadsheet work (i.e. financial modeling, etc.).

I own a MacBook Pro at home and it's completely useless for professional use (my career has been in investment banking and private equity). There are extremely limited excel shortcuts and the lack of a separate number pad is a real pain.

My plan is to make the iPad my everyday device and then find a moderately-priced laptop that I'll use for anything requiring spreadsheets, which I assume will be anything requiring financial models, graphs, statistics, etc. That plan may ultimately change, but there's no chance I'll be using Apple as my b-school laptop.

I would also HIGHLY recommend a PC instead of a MAC if you are planning on going into finance. You may think that EVERYTHING should be compatable with MAC, but I can tell you that this is not the case. Learn how to use a PC, learn how to use excel on a PC, and continue with PC. No company you will ever work for will allow you to use a Mac in finance, and if you are an excel guy (like me) you know what a detriment Mac's can be to your work. Even though Office for Mac trys to be 100% compatable, it absolutely isn't, and only gets worse with more advanced applications of it.

If you want to work in Private equity, investment banking, or anything finance heavy, I would not advise using a Mac.

I have the MBA - it's awesome. Doesn't heat more than a usual laptop. It's very fast!

And for the CD there is a simple option of using the SuperDrive:

https://store.apple.com/us/product/MC684ZM/A

You can even run CDs/DVDs that are mounted in other Macs (iMac, Macbook Pro etc.) - via Wifi

https://support.apple.com/kb/HT1777?viewlocale=en_US

Just to give anyone the heads up that is interested in a Lenovo, www.corporateperks.com is running one of the best Lenovo deals I've ever seen. It's like 20-30% off most laptops and accessories (even the newest docking stations, monitors, bags, etc..). I just picked up an x230, 128 SSD, I5 2.6 Ivy Bridge, 4GM RAM, Full Docking Station, 3 year on-site warranty, Webcam, fingerprint reader, backlit keyboard, 36 month version of Norton Internet Security 2012, 6 cell battery, IPS screen, full docking station (was $219, with deal was $149!), and many little accessories for $1,300. Saved almost $500 with the discount, and this was on top of the already "discounted" (The're ALWAYS running "discounts") price. Deal runs through June 12. Wasn't planning on buying my computer for another month or so, but this deal was way too good to pass up.

Note: Requires that you create an account... once you do, click on the lenovo deal under electronics (its the #1 used deal on the whole site right now) and click "Shop Now". It will redirect you to the Lenovo website except everything will be like 25% off. It's incredible.

Also, I have no affiliation with corporate perks and neither does GMAT Club. Just trying to hook up my fellow Clubbers

Moving this to the "B-School Life" section.

For reference, here are some similar discussions:
laptop-suggestion-113516.html
2010-laptop-discussion-91450.html

After finishing my first year at HBS, my recommendation for a laptop would probably be a 13" Macbook Air although at this point it probably makes sense to get the new slimmed down Macbook Pro which looks pretty sweet. I had a 13" Macbook Pro this past year and it felt way too heavy to be lugging around campus. (Edited to note: looks like the new slim Macbook Pro is only in the 15" model. Get the new Air than.)

As far as Excel modeling goes, I ran Parallels with Windows 7 and the latest Microsoft Office. At home I had a larger monitor that I docked my laptop to and a wireless Microsoft compatible keyboard so that I could do all the Excel shortcuts that I was used to. I have yet to use my DVD drive on my Macbook Pro although I do have an external drive as well which are crazy cheap these days.

Oh, and I was a diehard PC user but the prices are getting close that it didn't seem to be an unreasonable aesthetic premium. OS X is pretty slick and the touchpad is a joy to use. I also have the latest Office for Mac and while I do use the Excel when I'm too lazy to boot up Parallels, it's still a far cry from the Windows version for doing any heavy lifting. I know plenty of bankers and PE guys who are using Macs here at school but in the office they obviously would still be using their company issued Vaios or Thinkpads. Interesting to note that our Training the Street instructor did his Excel training from a Mac running Parallels as well. That seemed a bit strange.

Personally, I wouldn't do it. Google Docs are okay for standard stuff, but if you need to get format or formula heavy, you're going to be out of luck. Also, I would much rather be overprepared than underprepared. A nice, fast laptop will definitely be able to handle whatever is thrown at me, but a tablet probably won't be able to.

Pretty awesome right? Never seen anything quite like it... Even corporate perks.com mentions it's only for older models, but then once you're on the website it's like for everything! I feel like it's their employee pricing

I agree that a new laptop is not necessary if you already have one. The big problem that I can see with using a tablet as your primary computing device, Excel excluded, is that it is very limited. It's great for e-mails and browsing the web. For presentations or word processing, tablets are very limited. There just isn't the same capability. Also, I hate typing anything longer than a paragraph or so on a tablet. If you have to type even a five-hundred word essay, a tablet is not great. I have a feeling that if you decide to go with a tablet as a primary device that you will end up carrying around both a laptop and a tablet a lot of the time. If you're already carrying around a laptop, then the convenience of a tablet is greatly reduced.

On the Lenovo website you just go to Solutions For and scroll down to students. I am not sure if you the school matters, but I know the discount worked for Emory. You won't be able to get the X1 right now though because the X1 carbon is coming out in August. I ordered my X1 from the Lenovo outlet site (outlet.lenovo.com), 160SSD, Windows Prof64, whole nine yards for under $1,300 brand new. If you don't want to wait until August to order your laptop, thats a great price for a phenomenal computer. Emory's program begins in late July so I really didn't want to wait. Also, who knows how much the new X1 will cost or how long it will take to ship.

ls413 - Best to my knowledge the Zenbook doesn't have an ethernet port either.

I eventually went ahead with the Thinkpad X230 and couldn't be happier!

The Lenovo x-series is probably the best choice out, but if you want to be more price conscious, I would look at the Lenovo Thinkpad e-series. I think those are the small business laptops, not as thin as the x-series but easily good enough to get you through school. I got a brand new one for $700, while the x-series go for well over a thousand.

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Mine's Toshiba and works fine without any problem. Would recommend anyone who wants to get quality with a cheap price!

Good question, I've been wrestling with the same thing. Pretty sure I'm getting a used Lenovo X201 tablet, but would be curious to see others thoughts.

i5 processor laptop with 4-8gb of ram and a decent sized hard drive -- all you need, brand doesnt matter. i have a lenovo and it works fine, dell works fine, etc


do NOT overpay for apple products, especially if you want to do finance



credibility - done IT work on campus for many years, work in finance, and tech geek all aroun

dont buy from the school sites either go to dealnews.com or something and find one that meets your needs

I asked some students at Wharton's welcome weekend and a lot of them told me they have ipads that they use in class and store their class notes on (so that they don't have to print off as much paper, which they have to pay for). They said it's important to have a different computer to use excel on, but it doesn't need to be super nice as long as it has the basic programs you need.

Definitely not the answer I was expecting, but based on that I think I might just get a new ipad and also use my existing computer, which is a couple years old but still gets the job done. I'm really curious to hear what everyone else has to say though! I've been pondering this for awhile too.

I don't like the feel of Windows, so I'll be using a Macbook Air.

As for spreadsheet/Excel...Office for Mac is sufficient for my current, albeit somewhat limited, needs. But if a course requires Windows-only software, I'll just setup a dual boot.