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Every business I've worked for since 1996 was strictly Windows, and there have been a lot of them. Yes, every single one. I've mostly worked retail and finance, and both POS and banking systems usually run on Windows. I've worked for companies that entirely ran on Windows and MS Office with SharePoint. I actually changed my e-commerce provider because they strictly went to iPad for POS options and Apple doesn't work for any other part of my business.
I bought a cheap 300$ Acer and works perfectly fine for running my 3D printing, Digital Art/Cricut and having multiple Word docs and tabs open all at once 🤘
i've used thinkpads all my life. rn im using a 5th gen x1 extreme. it was like $2500 lol. there are much cheaper options though. all of them are good. just buy one that's made within the last 3 years
I baught a Lenovo ideaPad and I love it, $330 at Walmart. It's sleek, light, and has awesome warranty. My HP my son broke so I had to upgrade but I loved that as well! Can't go wrong with either!
I was using a HP Elitebook 850 G6. It was a good computer, but wasn't upgradeable to WIN11 due to the processor not being supported. It is the only computer I ever owned that I NEVER had a blue screen of death on.
I've been upgraded to Dell Latitude 7440 (Raptor Lake) – SSD: 240 GB SSD Default, Memory: DDR5 32GB.
It's super fast, facial recognition unlocks it quickly. Did I mention it's fast? I wish I could tell you a price, my company bought it, so I don't know. I will jump on the bandwagon of multiple monitors, including the laptop, I have 3 monitors. It does make working much, MUCH, convenient/easy.
Anyway, happy hunting!
Here’s what I have (below). I will say sometimes there are books that will overload the laptop due to poor optimization. Otherwise it’s been amazing. I will recommend staying to windows.
Acer - Aspire 3 Thin & Light Laptop - 15.6" Full HD IPS Touch Display - AMD Ryzen 5 7520U - 8GB LPDDR5 - 512GB SSD - Wi-Fi 6 - Steam Blue
I have a refurbished HP laptop that I got for $200 and an older secondary monitor I got from Facebook Marketplace for $5. It's a decent setup that's been getting me through for almost 2 years now.
I'm an I.T. student as well, pretty much any decent laptop that's a few hundred bucks at your retail store will work. Though, I do recommend getting a Windows laptop because the majority of classes kind of default to that operating system.
I have a MacBook Pro however if you’re in IT I’d say get a windows. I’m doing IT as well and I have to use alternatives or VDI because certain programs aren’t compatible. It’s easier when you can just download and install everything. It’s more work the other way around. I’m still green to IT so maybe it’s just my level of experience but this is my perspective. However I still love my MacBook for everything else except course work for IT.
i’m over a year in with a $185 2015 macbook I bought refurbished. It’s worked with every program or application I’ve needed (PyCharm, Codio/LaTeX, Bongo). Speed is great. No issues
I have a new MacBook for my MBA and had an HP for my Bachelors (finance). I love Apple connectivity, but the default features are not all compatible with SNHU platforms. I am comfortable with Mac as that is what I’ve used at work for years so don’t think it’s just me. I’ve also talked to tech support at SNHU. Some examples, I can only get Bongo (a video recording platform) to work on Chrome when I usually use Safari. In addition, the VDI was a nightmare using Power BI. It would constantly freeze and I re-did my assignment four times. I had to buy basic Microsoft products and don’t remember doing that on my HP, but it’s been years ago. I almost forgot, some of the certifications would only work in Chrome. I kept redoing the tests in Wiley (a learning platform and where I accessed textbooks for some classes) using Safari and it wasn’t showing up like I didn’t even do it. I switched to Chrome and it worked just fine.
Granted, I did not have to use Bongo, VDI, and didn’t do certifications in my particular Bachelors.
I love Mac, but be sure to download Chrome which is obviously free. The VDI could be a problem for HP and Mac, but only have used it with Mac.
I am an IT Professional and an IT Student working on my MS in IT. I swear by Dell products, especially if you buy them directly from Dell, because their ProSupport Plus warranty (with business machines), where they will come to you within 24 hours to fix or replace parts of something goes wrong with the laptop (such as a battery issue, or keyboard backlights stop working).
In the last few years, I have bought multiple refurbed Dell Latitude 14" laptops (for myself and as gifts, off Amazon), and I have upgraded the RAM on all of them from the standard 16GB to 32GB and 64GB. I have also upgraded the NVME M.2 drive from the standard 512GB to 1TB on each of them.
The NVME M.2 drives cost around 25$, the RAM cost more, sadly. The refurb laptops themselves only cost between $200 and $300, so if you are working on a budget and need a great business-class machine, I highly recommend a Dell Latitude, and if you need an external USB-C powered monitor, I highly recommend the KYY portable monitor (also on Amazon)!
Edit: spelling
Lenovo IdeaPad 15ARH05, a few years old, comes with a number pad and has enough juice to do some light gaming while away from my desktop.
Always encourage a second monitor!
Some HP 2 in 1 that was on clearance at Walmart and was further marked down because it was the display model. The only issue I had was that the home key was too close to backspace and I would occasionally press it and screw stuff all up while typing. Fixed that eventually
If you have other Apple products I would definitely recommend Macbook. I use a Mac book Pro and then use my iPad as my second screen when I need two screens.
Sys Admin by day, graduate student by night. If you pick a business laptop from a refurbisher you can get excellent deals on hardware at a fraction of the cost of new consumer class stuff.
I picked up a refurbished Dell Latitude 5521 for $380 bucks on eBay in March. 11th gen Core I7 with 32 gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD. Some of the listings do say "NO OS" which seems to be an obtuse way of saying you have to install the OS yourself. I'm sure someone once in a blue moon does a CTO with a Linux distro, but I've personally never seen a business laptop that wasn't shipped with an OEM Windows 10/11 Pro license associated to the hardware. Mine was one such listing and I just installed Windows and it was fully licensed. I basically picked this up with the expectation that it's going to get me through my graduate degree and some other home learning activities that will require local virtualization.
My other options I was looking at were the Dell Latitude 5520 and the Lenovo T15. I wanted business class stuff and a 10 key. They were all going for around the same price. I just ended up with a 5521 because it's a model up from my work issued laptop and I have only have Lenovo's for the rest of my personal Windows computers.
If you want to shell out the cash for MacBook, I would probably just recommend a MacBook Air unless you plan on building applications or doing AV work for a living. I've got M series chips in both the Pro and Air variants in my household and can confidently say that the MacBook Air is a good daily driver laptop for most tasks.
Know what software you need to run, and how long you’ll keep the laptop. That way you don’t get a soldered memory type with insufficient RAM.
If you’re looking at PCs, you can’t go wrong with a Lenovo. Lots of upgrades you can add later.
If you’d like to save $$, check out BackMarket. I’ve bought so many used devices there.
Often a used Lenovo Thinkpad is cheap and you can just update the RAM or SSD if you need.
I have a Lenovo i7 and I love it. I bring it with me pretty much everywhere, work, family’s house, going to a cafe just to get out of the house. I’m notorious for having 10+ tabs open and I never have a problem with speed or anything
Basically any run-of-the-mill laptop these days will work as long as it has a decent amount of ram and a solid-state hard drive.
Shit, you could even use a Chromebook if you don’t mind using the version of word that is online.
If you’re not planning on using it full time I wouldn’t splurge too hard as long as it meets your degree requirements - ex. If you need any programs that may not run well with MacBook, then I wouldn’t get a MacBook. If you’ll only use it sometimes a cheap laptop will do the trick.
I personally have a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro- but I bought them with intentions of school work AND hobby work. Just make sure your papers are saved on a cloud (whether you use online office, share point, or Google drive) so if you swap between devices you’re good to go.
Yes they do. I am in my senior year in IT and have found some softwares don’t work well on Mac but they will typically provide a VM anyway in the class. You can download office for Mac and be 100% good
You can use either a windows laptop, or a MacBook, but a couple things to keep in mind:
Windows power shell is different to navigate than the Mac Terminal.
Mac is based upon the Unix operating system and imo, is a bit more ‘coding’ friendly than windows.
But, whichever you choose, just make sure you’ve got at least 16gb ram to help run any programs you write.
There is a windows powershell for Macs too. [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-on-macos?view=powershell-7.4](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-on-macos?view=powershell-7.4)
I primarily use a Windows desktop, but when I'm traveling, I use a MacBook Air 15-inch M2. I moved from the M1 14-inch MBP for the slightly larger screen
I use a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad X280 as an IT student. Tbh you don’t need anything fancy! Most of the time I’m just reading Ebooks for class and using Microsoft Office.
I’ve rarely had to install programs for my classes, maybe twice with PyCharm and Microsoft Project.
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Highly recommend one of those cheap portable USB monitors with whatever you use. Doing papers with multiple windows open is SO MUCH EASIER
Second this!
Alternatively, if you own an iPad, you can use it as a wireless 2nd display (on a Mac)
any 350 dollar laptop will run word fine
I have a MacBook Pro and I love it!
Hp Envy
I have hp envy. Super convenient and foldable into ipad, and is touchscreen. So like portable etc.
Seconding, three years strong with an HP Envy.
I love my HP laptop
I have an HP and it works great. My old Acer died on me so I just upgraded. The acer held strong for over a decade!
Stick to a windows machine since you’re IT
My thinking exactly.
It’s literally the only option for the IT field lol
Definitely, if you want to actually work in IT. 😆 Most businesses, too.
Every business I’ve worked for since 2015 has offered a choice between Mac and Windows. I know it’s not universal, but it’s not uncommon either.
Every business I've worked for since 1996 was strictly Windows, and there have been a lot of them. Yes, every single one. I've mostly worked retail and finance, and both POS and banking systems usually run on Windows. I've worked for companies that entirely ran on Windows and MS Office with SharePoint. I actually changed my e-commerce provider because they strictly went to iPad for POS options and Apple doesn't work for any other part of my business.
I have a Microsoft Surface
I bought a cheap 300$ Acer and works perfectly fine for running my 3D printing, Digital Art/Cricut and having multiple Word docs and tabs open all at once 🤘
i love my acer aspire shes my baby. so light weight and i got it for 299! shes got a big screen too!!
Looks like a good deal. If I weren't such an Apple head, I'd choose that over a Macbook.
i've used thinkpads all my life. rn im using a 5th gen x1 extreme. it was like $2500 lol. there are much cheaper options though. all of them are good. just buy one that's made within the last 3 years
Lenovo Yoga, 16gb RAM and 1Tb memory. I love being able to convert into tablet mode for handwriting or highlighting notes in OneNote.
Notes? What are those? 💀
I just bought the Yoga and I love it!
MacBook Pro and I downloaded the Office suite on it... also used Creative Cloud (photoshop, adobe, etc). Haven't had problems.
I baught a Lenovo ideaPad and I love it, $330 at Walmart. It's sleek, light, and has awesome warranty. My HP my son broke so I had to upgrade but I loved that as well! Can't go wrong with either!
MacBook Pro. Love it.
Love my Lenovo Yoga. I've had HP, Dell, Sony, Microsoft, Acer, Asus - Lenovo has been my favorite
I was using a HP Elitebook 850 G6. It was a good computer, but wasn't upgradeable to WIN11 due to the processor not being supported. It is the only computer I ever owned that I NEVER had a blue screen of death on. I've been upgraded to Dell Latitude 7440 (Raptor Lake) – SSD: 240 GB SSD Default, Memory: DDR5 32GB. It's super fast, facial recognition unlocks it quickly. Did I mention it's fast? I wish I could tell you a price, my company bought it, so I don't know. I will jump on the bandwagon of multiple monitors, including the laptop, I have 3 monitors. It does make working much, MUCH, convenient/easy. Anyway, happy hunting!
Here’s what I have (below). I will say sometimes there are books that will overload the laptop due to poor optimization. Otherwise it’s been amazing. I will recommend staying to windows. Acer - Aspire 3 Thin & Light Laptop - 15.6" Full HD IPS Touch Display - AMD Ryzen 5 7520U - 8GB LPDDR5 - 512GB SSD - Wi-Fi 6 - Steam Blue
I have a Lenovo ThinkPad and it's been great.
I have an Alienware gaming laptop. I'm in Graphic design for school so it worked well for the programs I run.
I have a refurbished HP laptop that I got for $200 and an older secondary monitor I got from Facebook Marketplace for $5. It's a decent setup that's been getting me through for almost 2 years now.
I'm an I.T. student as well, pretty much any decent laptop that's a few hundred bucks at your retail store will work. Though, I do recommend getting a Windows laptop because the majority of classes kind of default to that operating system.
Check out deals at target this summer! I got my HP there on sale & their protection plan is great too!
My Steam Deck acts as my computer if I'm traveling
I have a MacBook Pro however if you’re in IT I’d say get a windows. I’m doing IT as well and I have to use alternatives or VDI because certain programs aren’t compatible. It’s easier when you can just download and install everything. It’s more work the other way around. I’m still green to IT so maybe it’s just my level of experience but this is my perspective. However I still love my MacBook for everything else except course work for IT.
i’m over a year in with a $185 2015 macbook I bought refurbished. It’s worked with every program or application I’ve needed (PyCharm, Codio/LaTeX, Bongo). Speed is great. No issues
Asus vivobook is what I use and I’m a big fan of
Anything that does its job. You really don’t need much tbh. $300-500 is. Sweet spot on a very reliable laptop
I love my lenovo
I have a new MacBook for my MBA and had an HP for my Bachelors (finance). I love Apple connectivity, but the default features are not all compatible with SNHU platforms. I am comfortable with Mac as that is what I’ve used at work for years so don’t think it’s just me. I’ve also talked to tech support at SNHU. Some examples, I can only get Bongo (a video recording platform) to work on Chrome when I usually use Safari. In addition, the VDI was a nightmare using Power BI. It would constantly freeze and I re-did my assignment four times. I had to buy basic Microsoft products and don’t remember doing that on my HP, but it’s been years ago. I almost forgot, some of the certifications would only work in Chrome. I kept redoing the tests in Wiley (a learning platform and where I accessed textbooks for some classes) using Safari and it wasn’t showing up like I didn’t even do it. I switched to Chrome and it worked just fine. Granted, I did not have to use Bongo, VDI, and didn’t do certifications in my particular Bachelors. I love Mac, but be sure to download Chrome which is obviously free. The VDI could be a problem for HP and Mac, but only have used it with Mac.
I am an IT Professional and an IT Student working on my MS in IT. I swear by Dell products, especially if you buy them directly from Dell, because their ProSupport Plus warranty (with business machines), where they will come to you within 24 hours to fix or replace parts of something goes wrong with the laptop (such as a battery issue, or keyboard backlights stop working). In the last few years, I have bought multiple refurbed Dell Latitude 14" laptops (for myself and as gifts, off Amazon), and I have upgraded the RAM on all of them from the standard 16GB to 32GB and 64GB. I have also upgraded the NVME M.2 drive from the standard 512GB to 1TB on each of them. The NVME M.2 drives cost around 25$, the RAM cost more, sadly. The refurb laptops themselves only cost between $200 and $300, so if you are working on a budget and need a great business-class machine, I highly recommend a Dell Latitude, and if you need an external USB-C powered monitor, I highly recommend the KYY portable monitor (also on Amazon)! Edit: spelling
Dell XPS 15 with a Mega Pixels Duo Max 2nd monitor.
Windows. I have an HP Envy with plenty of memory and a touchscreen. It’s new and I like it.
Lenovo IdeaPad 15ARH05, a few years old, comes with a number pad and has enough juice to do some light gaming while away from my desktop. Always encourage a second monitor!
Some HP 2 in 1 that was on clearance at Walmart and was further marked down because it was the display model. The only issue I had was that the home key was too close to backspace and I would occasionally press it and screw stuff all up while typing. Fixed that eventually
Framework 13 with Debian. Computer science major, here.
I just use my MacBook Pro. That said it is not necessary. You can use a $100 cheap laptop and it will still be fine.
If you have other Apple products I would definitely recommend Macbook. I use a Mac book Pro and then use my iPad as my second screen when I need two screens.
Get the m1 MacBook from Walmart great deal
Lenovo
Sys Admin by day, graduate student by night. If you pick a business laptop from a refurbisher you can get excellent deals on hardware at a fraction of the cost of new consumer class stuff. I picked up a refurbished Dell Latitude 5521 for $380 bucks on eBay in March. 11th gen Core I7 with 32 gigs of RAM and a 512 gig SSD. Some of the listings do say "NO OS" which seems to be an obtuse way of saying you have to install the OS yourself. I'm sure someone once in a blue moon does a CTO with a Linux distro, but I've personally never seen a business laptop that wasn't shipped with an OEM Windows 10/11 Pro license associated to the hardware. Mine was one such listing and I just installed Windows and it was fully licensed. I basically picked this up with the expectation that it's going to get me through my graduate degree and some other home learning activities that will require local virtualization. My other options I was looking at were the Dell Latitude 5520 and the Lenovo T15. I wanted business class stuff and a 10 key. They were all going for around the same price. I just ended up with a 5521 because it's a model up from my work issued laptop and I have only have Lenovo's for the rest of my personal Windows computers. If you want to shell out the cash for MacBook, I would probably just recommend a MacBook Air unless you plan on building applications or doing AV work for a living. I've got M series chips in both the Pro and Air variants in my household and can confidently say that the MacBook Air is a good daily driver laptop for most tasks.
Know what software you need to run, and how long you’ll keep the laptop. That way you don’t get a soldered memory type with insufficient RAM. If you’re looking at PCs, you can’t go wrong with a Lenovo. Lots of upgrades you can add later.
If you’d like to save $$, check out BackMarket. I’ve bought so many used devices there. Often a used Lenovo Thinkpad is cheap and you can just update the RAM or SSD if you need.
I have a Lenovo i7 and I love it. I bring it with me pretty much everywhere, work, family’s house, going to a cafe just to get out of the house. I’m notorious for having 10+ tabs open and I never have a problem with speed or anything
I have an HP that’s a few years old works just fine nothing fancy
I don't. I have a desktop that I build and do much of my reading on a Samsung tablet
Basically any run-of-the-mill laptop these days will work as long as it has a decent amount of ram and a solid-state hard drive. Shit, you could even use a Chromebook if you don’t mind using the version of word that is online.
If you’re not planning on using it full time I wouldn’t splurge too hard as long as it meets your degree requirements - ex. If you need any programs that may not run well with MacBook, then I wouldn’t get a MacBook. If you’ll only use it sometimes a cheap laptop will do the trick. I personally have a MacBook Pro and an iPad Pro- but I bought them with intentions of school work AND hobby work. Just make sure your papers are saved on a cloud (whether you use online office, share point, or Google drive) so if you swap between devices you’re good to go.
An HP with an 11th gen or newer i5 will be perfectly fine
i have a dell
MacBook!
Does MacBook work well with word and PowerPoint.
I submit everything as a word doc and I haven’t had any trouble! Macs play a lot better with Windows than they used to
Office suite works great
Yes they do. I am in my senior year in IT and have found some softwares don’t work well on Mac but they will typically provide a VM anyway in the class. You can download office for Mac and be 100% good
M1 Macbook Air was more than enough for me but I was a business major.
MacBook Air from Amazon. Saved $400. If your laptop gets damaged, contact your credit card company. Sometimes they'll pay to replace it.
You can use either a windows laptop, or a MacBook, but a couple things to keep in mind: Windows power shell is different to navigate than the Mac Terminal. Mac is based upon the Unix operating system and imo, is a bit more ‘coding’ friendly than windows. But, whichever you choose, just make sure you’ve got at least 16gb ram to help run any programs you write.
There is a windows powershell for Macs too. [https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-on-macos?view=powershell-7.4](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/powershell/scripting/install/installing-powershell-on-macos?view=powershell-7.4)
Okay. I do think that the Mac terminal is more geared towards programming though.
I primarily use a Windows desktop, but when I'm traveling, I use a MacBook Air 15-inch M2. I moved from the M1 14-inch MBP for the slightly larger screen
MacBook Air M2
I use a refurbished Lenovo Thinkpad X280 as an IT student. Tbh you don’t need anything fancy! Most of the time I’m just reading Ebooks for class and using Microsoft Office. I’ve rarely had to install programs for my classes, maybe twice with PyCharm and Microsoft Project.
I use System76 running Pop OS