Do I really need a laptop?

I get that there is no substitute for a computer for MS Office type work. The real question is how much work really gets done while away from the homestead? What is the laptop mainly used for?

Becky

What about a 11.5" notebook, can I use this or will I need to get a full size laptop? It has full memory, but it might be a pain to use excel on a small screen, any thoughts?

I see the ipad as a device to consume data only, not input. Now with cloud computing prevalent, you can get a Laptop to run the basics, and with that you can update or work on any file anywhere, and when you are home, you can work from your desktop. I imagine you will have alot of group project work, library sessions, coffee shop sessions, etc. and having a laptop that syncs with all your work via the cloud will be priceless in terms of giving you flexibility and productive mobility. With that being said, I think a laptop is very functional. The ipad will make life 10x easier for reviewing 50 page slide decks or viewing lecture podcasts or reading an ecopy of your 500 page fin acc textbook (not to mention all the other crap it does)

You could get through school with just a laptop, you couldn't with just an ipad or just a desktop.

Thats the way I see it anyways...

I had one of those so called netbooks back in the day and it was so crappy I had to return. Steve jobs was right in labeling those things as POS, because they really are. All I can say is dont do it. Buy a 14.1" at a minimum with decent battery life (2hrs +). You will be so frustrated working on a 11.5" screen. These are personal preferences though, if you think you can make it give it a go, but I found them to be underpowered and constricting.

I have one already that I use as my everyday computer, it's not a netbook because it has 250gb, more of a mini-laptop, although my everyday computer activity now consists of facebook, netflix, emailing and looking up random facts lol. Might need something a bit more for school. I guess I'll start with that and see how it goes, if I find myself needing something else I'll just buy it then.

yea... computers are the biggest pieces of depreciating garbage there is. If you aren't going to use it literally everyday from the day you get it, it is such a waste.

Enough for it to be annoying. Most meetings I was ever involved in were at school. That may depend a little on whether you are at a campus versus a city university (I believe Kellogg people did work at each others houses, probably after spending a good hour hugging as a team in one of the bedrooms).

Anyway - there are enough classes that center around excel that I would want a laptop. Hell, I got annoyed enough having a mac with their crazy shortcut mess - which still annoys me with the thing to this day when I do work on virtual PC and stuff. But, anyway, I digress - if I get annoyed with shortcuts and stuff and remember rooms of groups of us arsing around with excel for class - you really probably need one. I say that as someone who cut pretty much every corner possible on expense at school (bar spending money on a mac, though it is still the only machine in the house after 4 years and replaced a 5 year old monster).

That was a long way of saying yes and getting in a dig at Kellogg folk being all touchy-feely.

lol the way you wrote it it sounds more raunchy then touchy feely....

You definitely need a laptop. For many classes, you'll be creating and editing spreadsheet models that would prove to be a nightmare on an iPad or netbook. If you have any intentions of going into finance, you'll definitely want to have a laptop so that you can learn the Excel shortcuts and hotkeys.

Even if you aren't going into a purely finance industry, you'll still want to have a laptop; making a powerpoint deck on an iPad isn't the same as doing it on a laptop. I'll disagree about the cutoff for an acceptable screen size; I think the 13" lightweight notebooks should be just as fine as the 14" ones, while at the same time being more portable. I do think the 10 and 11" ones are too small, especially when you have to view multiple columns in an Excel model.

Bottom line - repeat after me: the iPad is just a toy, the iPad is just a toy....

Yes, we do a lot of "hugging" in bedrooms. NYU students would probably get to do more "hugging" too if their bedrooms weren't always being used for sit-ins to protest whatever cause you've decided is of vital importance that week. Or if they weren't such quantonerds that they can't even function as a human being and convince another person to go back to their bedroom for some "hugging". You can choose whichever stereotype you want to go with.

I do agree on the need for a laptop though. When we aren't singing kumbaya or doing finger painting, most of our time is spent in meetings where we're doing work in Excel, Powerpoint or Stata, none of which works particularly well on an iPad - in fact your iPad would probably explode if you even tried to load Stata on it.

You'll probably need a laptop for work in group projects. Imagine working on a presentation together or an excel model.

Please do not buy a Dell computer. I purchased the XPS 13 6 months ago and it has crashed 3 times already. Each time I had to
reinstall the operating system, thereby deleting everything stored on my laptop - files, pictures -everything. I would have lost
it all if I did not have cloud storage. Technicians could not help me retrive backup files from the hard drive.
To make matters worse, they asked me to pay more money above the basic warranty which I had already paid for to "fix" the issue, which
they could not do successfully. The first time it happened I was told it was a one-off event. This is
the third time this has happened. I've spent countless hours on the phone over several days, trying an
inordinate number of steps to no avail. Dell refused to give me a refund, replacement or exchange despite my "premium"
warranty. To add insult to injury, they claimed they would send someone over to fix it in 2-3 days. Being
that technicians don't work on the weekend and they have no emergency response.

Before, books and pen are enough when you study. But nowadays, tablets, laptops, and other electronic devices are essential part of a student life. Using a tablet for studying is pretty convenient. Because it is smaller than a laptop, I find it easy to carry everywhere and anytime.

I use my tablet to take down notes, type up assignments, record class lectures, and even collaborate with my classmates for a group work. By the time I need to review and study my lessons, I can easily access school stuff in my home or even in a café.