Laptop needed for business.

tarajayne

We've just set up a new company, and typically the laptop his company he left let him keep has gone wrong now. He needs Excel but we were considering a Mac. I think we can get it for that but have no idea what we should be buying. Don't know if we should consider a refurb? Any ideas appreciated. TIA.

gonzo127

all depends on what went wrong with his old one, sometimes these things can be easily (and freely) fixed

otherwise depends on how much your willing to spend, a mac, although nice/good etc is a very expensive option if all you need to do is run excel, as excel can be ran on pretty much any laptop from a £100 refurb to a £2k top of the range laptop

tarajayne

gonzo127 wrote: »

all depends on what went wrong with his old one, sometimes these things can be easily (and freely) fixed

otherwise depends on how much your willing to spend, a mac, although nice/good etc is a very expensive option if all you need to do is run excel, as excel can be ran on pretty much any laptop from a £100 refurb to a £2k top of the range laptop

Thanks, no, the tech guy at his old company has looked at it and it's old but has done well for him. And the computer/laptop would probably be the most important part of the business apart from him so very important. All the data, emails on it would be all the business is about really.

tarajayne

He's a Project Manager so spread sheets etc, and all communication by email and all need keeping for years.

Figment

...then whatever you decide, ensure you have an external hard drive to keep copies of your data.

Ideally you need three copies of everything - one on the laptop, one on an external drive, one on a DVD. To be really safe, at least one copy should be stored off-site.

You can get MS Office for Mac but be aware that whilst it's fundamentally the same it looks different from what he's been used to using on a PC and to some extent will be like learning how to use a new piece of software.

You can also get compatible office suites free of charge. Libre Office will read and write Excel format documents, spreadsheets etc.

reallyAnnoyed_2

It's not just excel compatibility. You must also consider commonly used asset management software (for version control) and PM software AND their compatibility with Mac.
Email and data security can easily be achieved by setting-up NAS or exchange servers.

gonzo127

great advice above for back up - although i would potentially suggest having a cloud backup instead of dvd as then you will know one copy will be stored off site whereas with dvd's not everyone remembers or can be bothered to take the dvd's off site.

as to other bits it would be worth while checking if any other software is likely to be needed as not everything has a mac version - although you can use boot camp and install windows as a virtual machine to run none compatable software but you would need ot purchase windows to do this, however this could beoff set by the fact the mac software does tend to be more expensive than the same on windows.

otherwise try to keep in mind that regardless of the reputation mac have for reliability, in most independant reliability studies based on stuff such as warrenty claims and helpline calls, Apple usualy come out around 3rd or 4th, which although is very good, does go to show that they arent the most reliable system around

tarajayne

Thanks, lots to think about. It's a Sony he's had for the last six years or so.

Figment

Macs do thing differently from PCs, therefore I would suggest he sticks with a PC, otherwise rather than concentrating on growing your new business, he'll be trying to learn how to do stuff on the Mac (that he already knows on a PC)

John_Gray

If this chap needs Excel, he will probably want a LARGE/WIDE screen. There aren't many laptops which do 1920x1080...

Figment

gonzo127 wrote: »

great advice above for back up - although i would potentially suggest having a cloud backup instead of dvd as then you will know one copy will be stored off site whereas with dvd's not everyone remembers or can be bothered to take the dvd's off site.

I intentionally omitted cloud storage as I have an aversion to everything cloud based, due to an expensive and very time-consuming experience after we'd transferred a large number of websites to cloud hosting because of it's alleged reliability and robustness ("if one server fails, the others in the cluster take over") only to lose the lot for days due to the cluster itself suffering a major hardware failure.