I got Office 2011. It is an improvement over previous versions but it still seems a bit slow. Excel now has VBA and appears to be at the same level as windows excel. But, if you are an excel jock I would recommend keeping a windows partition and doing your work on that, just because the mac version is a little different than the pc version. If you are only a casual user of excel then I don’t see any problem with it.
I have a Macbook Pro running bootcamp. Basically anything in Excel and Word I use Windows for. Everything else is done under OSX. And yes, when you install a new partition of bootcamp, it’s exactly the same as a Windows interface. Keyboard shortcuts are the same. The function keys (F1, F2, etc) can be remapped through a setting in the Bootcamp settings. Also a previous poster mentioned that he/she needs to go into OSX, then select Bootcamp to load (essentially starting up the computer 2 times). This is the wrong way to do it. You hold Alt on startup, and then you can select directly which partition to load. There is another option in OSX itself where you can select Windows as the default partition so that at each startup, you will automatically go into Windows.
Thought I’d bump this old thread. Doing some consulting work, serious models, nothing can go wrong. I’m MacBookPro at home, buying a separate PC would suck, so…
Is Parallels still the way to go? You buy Windows 10 Pro, and a Parallels Business Edition yearly subscription, and then you are ready to go? Desktop Office is included in Windows I hope?? Why does Microsoft make everything so complicated.
Office 2016 (or 2015 for Mac) brought significantly improvements compared to 2011 version. Anyway, for using complex MS Excel functions, the better solution is using VM. I’ ve been using Parallels since its version 6 with last versions of Office installed in Windows 7 on VM beside Mac Office installed on OS X. Last version of Parallels is quick but sometimes causes Kernel panics.
Office is not included in Windows.
A lot of b-school friends tried the Mac + Parallel’s approach. There were a lot of crashes during heavy modeling/computational exercises. Plus using the function + F keys is a huge downer imo. Most of them regretted it.
Stick to a PC…
Sons of @##%!!
I heard some talk of panic kernels in online reviews, not cool.
I went for this baby…never looked back
http://www.dell.com/uk/p/xps-13-9350-laptop/pd?oc=cnx9340&l=en&s=dhs
Dell XPS 13 with core i-7 processor, 16 GB RAM and a 1TB SSD…its the nuts, if a tad pricey.
Just noticed this thread got necromanced from back in 2010…
MacBookPro 2016 top model + Windows10 + Office 365 + Parallels.
It’s pretty darn awesome. Parellels let’s you do all your normal mac stuff and keeps Windows mostly out of the way, I keep Excel running on a different virtual desktop. Excel is really snappy even running one of my bigger models, no error messages yet. MS Windows itself is annoying, but I only fire it up when working on models.
If you are using excel too much or you need every function of excel then go for windows laptop,
On Parallels on Mac I installed: Win 7 (works more better than Windows 10), Ubuntu, Debian and Kali Linux. Everything works fine. I noticed Kernel Panics on host appear only if I use cloud sync on VM. rMBP high end model BTO.
32 gb of ram and you’ll be fine. I can run gta iv just fine on my Mac via Windows. If it can handle gta, excel should be a cakewalk.
BUMP!
So i’m laptop shopping. Based on prior convos, safe to conclude that if you do heavy excel work, stick with PC, otherwise, one can move to Macs with running windows through utilizing Boot Camp and Parallels?
For PC users, any recs on what to purchase. I’m coming from a 2010 VAIO. I do some excel modeling and multimedia stuff. Otherwise, i’m a pretty basic user. I will also be using it to work remotely but i go through a VPN so i dont think that requires much more than an internet connection.
Thanks in advance.
I’ve been meaning to follow up on this…flawless system.
Worked two months building a model from scratch on this system, realistically in the 99th percentile of finance model complexity, monte carlo and all the junk. Long calculations ran plenty fast, entirely zero bugs , not even one minor bug encountered in two months full time work, presented to investors who used all sorts of machines and everything came up just as expected on their machines.
Really glad I can use my home mac as my work computer, the thought of two laptops was unbearable.
Thanks for the input purealpha.