INSEAD JANUARY 2011 INTAKE

My second interview is scheduled on 17th of May. So not finished yet.

Talking about laptops; do u guys have any suggestions for me - am planning to buy a macbook but totally clueless on how to go about it..

some / any spec advice will be greatly appreciated..

future classmate (optimism helps), i sorely suggest to stay away from macs. my good friend, crezence, would say no to me, but i think the mac is the device of the devil.

Did they give you a reason for ding as diversity or just the normal ding letter?

Totally

so if not mac then what ???

right now i'm using a sony vaio and really dont like dealing with the vista on it- very slow and irritating..

I think Sony is of the devil... with them you're really paying more for "design"... you'd get comparable specifications for lower costs with other brands.

I'm personally thinking of a mac myself... but cant decide what exactly.

But i guess a few important questions to ask yourself are:

How attached are you to windows? (Learning how to use a mac effectively is kinda like learning windows from scratch again)
What are you going to use it for? If its just basic word processing and presentations you wont need anything too powerful... if you want to play games etc... then it depends how demanding the games are going to be
What else is important to you? Like does it have to be super portable? Or do you need a big screen? (I think 13.3" screens are fine but vodkacran seems to be a proponent of the 15" at least)

Couple of other pointers... vista gets abit slow when you dont have enough RAM... what might help is to move to win7... imho its more efficient and faster than vista... and also aesthetically alot nicer.

Also regarding hard disk space... give a quick think about normal hard disks vs solid state drives... i find ssds more stable and reliable, but the downside is that they come with a hefty price tag. If you want more storage space, rather than going for a higher end model, you could get an external hdd and those do go pretty cheaply.

Where abouts are you located sinhadee?

I just bought an HP laptop yesterday - in fact, my wife gifted it to me. I agree win7 is much better and with a mac, there are also compatibility issues to consider. Even if you get past learning the O/S, all softwares you download might not work and so you have to hunt around for a mac compatible version. Also, one would tend to share pictures & files with fellow students through a pen drive on campus and for the mac minority population, such files might not always work depending on the formats. For general office applns (documents, spreadsheets, presentations) & games, I found HP a good blend of cost, functionality and looks. My configuration: core 2 processor, 4 GB RAM, 300 GB HDD, Nvidia 512 MB graphics card, inbuilt webcam, etc. I love gizmos and I think it's a good machine. Sony is too expensive imo.

I've a 13" MACBOOK PRO and it's worth a buy. All other new machines are with Windows 7, which is a shameless copy of Max OSX! So better go with Mac. Moreover you can use Windows with Mac (as a virtual machine) as well as a bootable OS and the mac office version is better than ever.

Come to think of it, an iPAD will be a cool option to read books during MBA

mbagal and those who haven't heard about the 2nd interview - any updates? who is your coordinator? i am still waiting for mine.

I'm not a geek by any means, but in the last couple of years I've become a Linux guy. I now run the Ubuntu distro. Sure, the learning curve is a bit steep, as with any new OS, but now that I've learned the system I swear by it.

Like most Mac systems, I run Windows 7 through VMWare so that I can use Windows apps when necessary (photoshop). Unlike Mac, Linux software is free and very extensive. Linux can also handle almost any type of audio/video under the sun without codecs or digital rights problems. It is clean, fast, fully customizable, and you don't need the newest, fastest machine to get great performance.

I haven't heard back yet. My coordinator is Marie-Luce Picard.

I see a liberal! shoot him...

I've used linux.. didn't like it.. if anything it's kinda like fun to play with for programming and what not..

the latest macbook pro just came out, so that might be a good buy.. the macbook (white) is gonna come out soon..

keep checking this link..
https://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#MacBook

it tells you when stuff is rumored to come out.

Since we start in Jan (hopefully), it's probably to early to get either.. (apple comes out with something new like every 6 months).


I just bought a Macbook pro for my gf.. she loves that thing..

One of the laptops I bought then returned on monday was the Lenovo x201. win 7 64-bit with 4 gb ram (upgradable to 8 gb), i5 core and only 3.18 lbs.

it's 12 inch screen with no disk drive which isn't too much since you can always dock it at home with a large 24 inch screen. pretty much unbreakable system with tons of power and super light, it's just not the prettiest..

the only reason i returned it is that I don't kow if my start date is august or january... so I can't buy it yet if I don't start for 8 months..

vodkacran ; Crezence; rishiphadke; hsourabh; honus100; GoBruins

thank you guys!!! ....for all ur inputs

hopefully i'll get to go laptop "comparing" shopping sometime soon..

there is a laptop thread in the business life sub-forum.

again, the optimist in me.
it would be funny if we all get in... and start comparing what we've bought. and diss each others' laptops.

i just bought a 15" HP one. i've always used HP even with work, and i'd prefer to reuse plugs/docks at home. i can't go below 15" because i am so used to a keypad that i can't work without it... like right now, 987654321.