2012-13 Laptop Discussion

EDIT: Double post.

You saying that you don't see a difference is making me quite optimistic!

And I'm deciding between the Nexus and the Kindle Fire HD right now.
Segway: should we start a 2012-2013 Tablet Discussion thread?

Perhaps! I'd participate in a tablet discussion thread, which may -- perhaps -- be different from a laptop thread!

But further, my sister is a b-school professor, actually and uses the kindle fire... which I think speaks well of it?

I would say that is a ringing endorsement for the Kindle Fire. I'll have to make a decision soon, haha.


Has anyone else bought or decided on a laptop/tablet for b-school? Would love to hear thoughts.

I'll probably purchase right before school starts but i'm probably going to get a mac and run parallels on it for MS Office.

I use a Mac at home and a Lenovo at work currently. Trying to do anything complex with formulas in Mac Excel is excruciatingly slow and often slows down the whole computer. I also really like all the new features in Office 13 on Windows.

If I get a Mac I'd want to get one at least a month before school starts to get adjusted. By parallels, do you mean running Windows on a Mac and switching back and forth between Windows and iOS? (I don't really know Mac terms). Only thing I've heard of is Bootcamp.

I love Office 2010. I used to think one of Mac's biggest wins over Office was Keynote. It still is, but I think PowerPoint 2010 reduced that gap a fair bit. And Excel is needed at any b-school so that is my main consideration right now.

Are you planning to get/do you plan to use a tablet as well?

Parallels is a piece of software that allows you to run Windows as a window within Mac OSX. Alternately you can start the Mac completely up in Windows.

I'm personally not a fan of Keynote, but then as an ex-consultant I swear allegiance to Powerpoint. In terms of Excel the Windows version is far superior than the Mac version. The new Excel in Office 13 is awesome as well with some really cool new features. Check this out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhwOEGjhxw (yes, i'm totally an excel geek).

I currently have use of an iPad, Surface (provided by work) and occasionally my mother's Galaxy tab. Out of all of these i'll probably take the iPad with me, but i'll probably only use it on trips. For some reason I don't find I use tablets that much. I'd much rather do quick things on my iPhone and take a mac around with me. That's just me though. If your looking at getting a tablet out of those three i'd pick the iPad, if your not an Apple fan then the Surface isn't bad once you get used to it.

Laptop has become one of the basic need of almost every student of this level. I am a PC lover and never been to mac actually. Now I am going to replace my older laptop with the window 8 notebook+ tablet. I like such technology as this kind of technology has made the education quite easier and a lot fun.

I started using a Mac for work last year. At home I have a PC with Windows, and have almost always used Windows OS. Usability for Mac is much better than Windows, but there is less clarity about how everything works. I guess that's the idea, though. Macs are superior for programmers, IMHO, but I guess in the ideal world we'd all be on Ubuntu . Excel in Mac is my only hang-up; many of the deficiencies have already been noted here. Thus I'm considering a Thinkpad or Macbook Air/Pro. Gotta have something with a keyboard with all the typing that you'll do in Bschool, and Excel is THAT important to make me consider a PC. I'll wait until I pick a school to buy, though, since they typically have some standard software packages and such that they like to install.

My SO is in school right now and she has an old Mac, but my SO's not a computer/technology person. It's enough to get you by.

Agreed. I think it makes sense to see where you end up, then purchase a computer (or not!) based on that particular school's requirements. I'm just a bit sad because I don't really want to have to "split" things across Mac / PC (I don't anticipate ever actually giving up my Mac, as my personal businesses rely upon its design / artistic capabilities, and I've synced every iPod / Phone / Pad I own (which is a lot) to it).

The alternative to Parallel is VMWare. Here's my experience.

What I find to be most useful is to seamlessly alternate between running Windows' Office 2010 in a window and running an internet browser under OSX. I also find convenient the fact that upon re-opening Windows, I retrieve the same content as I left at the moment I previously closed it. In other words, the spreadsheet I left opened is still there; the financial application that was opened goes back to its previous state. Compare this to a pc running Windows (only) where I must quit all applications prior to shutting down the pc. A third benefit I find most useful is the ease of making a backup of the whole of Windows to its precise state I left it when I closed VMWare: I copy a single (big) folder as a means to create a backup.

Perhaps you guessed right by inferring I keep Windows mostly off the internet, as I may use OSX for that while using Windows for specialized pc-specific applications.

Any thoughts on the Lenovo Ideapad Yoga for b-school? It's really pretty, haha!

https://www.cnet.com/laptops/lenovo-idea ... 77652.html

Thank you for this.

At my workplace, I'm the only one who can really use Excel. I love Excel. Sometimes I feel so alone because of this. So, so alone... Ostracized by my coworkers, cast out like a second-class citizen.

It's good to know there are people out there like me.

That's funny! Excel is an amazing tool.

There are so many things to learn and I'm pretty excited to put my hands on Excel -13. Looks really good.

Same here, I'm the "Excel Master" at work... Once you really learn VBA, the opportunities are endless. (This new feature is pretty amazing, can't wait to upgrade)

I know what you mean. In college I used VBA and Excel to write a program that calculated the folding structure of any polypeptide chain (protein) based on users' input. It took forever to run, but it was accurate.

Sorry to derail the laptop discussion.