New Ulta-Portable. - by Tony_Tarantula
Tony_Tarantula on 14/4/2015 at 15:54
Hey everyone! So I love my current laptop in spite of flaws. It may be noisy, dusty, and beaten up with no battery life, but this thing can game like nobody's business.
The catch is that my plans have changed for this year, and I'm going to be attending school full time. Consequently that computer isn't going to be a good fit. Personally I'd rather not be that one asshole that sounds like he brought a box fan to class.
I'm looking to permanently dock this laptop and get a replacement for class. The catch is, that the program in question is a top 20 MBA program......which means lots of group projects, frequent presentations, and a LOT of in-depth quantitative analysis using Excel, research on Bloomberg, and possibly more specific business applications such as project management software.
So I've got a couple requirements: I don't need a lot of power, but I do need enough to run complicated excel models with built in circularities and enough to run any other office software smoothly (at no point will I ever approach the demands of things like MATLAB or CAD applications).
Video output is mandatory for group projects. HDMI & VGA preferred, but either on its own will do.
NOISE AND BATTERY LIFE: This is the big one. I need a machine that is as quiet as I can get it (for reasons mentioned) and where the battery will last on three/four hour bus trips to NYC and Chicago during recruiting season.
Tony_Tarantula on 15/4/2015 at 15:12
I'll need to narrow it down a bit more. Any MacOS laptop is a no-go because there are a couple of advanced functions in MS Office (Excel in particular) that don't work in the Mac Versions.
Renzatic on 15/4/2015 at 15:39
By nixing the Mac option, you did just that.
You'll have to decide which sounds more appealing to you. The XPS 13 gives you more bang for the buck, especially if you go with the non-touch lower resolution screen (it's still 1920x1080, which isn't half bad even in these high density display days). I think it also has the best battery life of all the Windows based ultrabooks, lasting around 6-10 hours depending on what you're doing.
The SP3 is a good deal lighter, is apparently easier to use on the go, gives you the option of using a pressure sensitive, fine point stylus, and MS is all but building Windows 10 around the thing. The downside is that the screen is an inch smaller, the battery doesn't last quite as long on a charge (4-8 hours on average), and it's more expensive.
If you want the tried and true classic laptop experience, the XPS 13 is the way to go. If you want something a little more modern and versatile, the SP3.
Tony_Tarantula on 21/4/2015 at 17:47
Thanks.
The XPS looks like something to get further down the road, as it's a bit high-budget compared to mine. I ended up getting an HP Stream based on good reviews. As expected it's significantly underpowered compared to most but its enough to handle even fairly lengthy Excel documents easily. I'm also pleasantly surprised by the Windows 8 integration: combined with the touch screen and the heavy reliance on cloud computing, it's almost perfect for the purpose. I can easily take notes and make modifications to files on the go which are then automatically synced to OneDrive for use by my beefier gaming laptop.
For reference, here's the type of work that I'm going to be doing:
Inline Image:
http://www.jian.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/PL-10-yr.jpgtwisty on 24/4/2015 at 12:53
Looks like pretty standard fare for an MBA course Tony. Probably any of those devices you mentioned will be able to easily handle spreadsheets like that as there is relatively little actual computation being performed. Personally speaking I am currently using a Surface Pro 3 (i5 256GB) for a whole range of things from Monte Carlo analysis to financial modelling and it works just as well as any PC would for those types of operations.
