please advise - PC vs. OSX/PC

[Dmytro]

nevermind the bullocks!

dominic, thanks for the pragmatic response, it's helpful.

My laptops are Dells, and I'm happy with them. But I have the deluxe support plan, where I get intelligent beings answering my call and fixing them. When I had the cheap plan, I got stuck in the "Your screen is not broken, try installing windows" hell.

this xps m1330 comes with dedicated 'intelligent beings' support, which i agree is a great braincell preservation program.

But there is no option for a newbie quant other than Excel for Windows.

Excel for Macintosh is being withdrawn and replaced by a pile of shit that does not work properly and can never be made useful for finance. Mac Excel will not work properly with Windows Excel.
There is no useful spreadsheet for the Mac. Apples "Numbers" is bollocks.

although we try to do everything in c++ at baruch, i do take your point on the importance of excel.
while mac excel might have its glitches, what has your experience been, if any, with using your mac as a windows machine, i.e. using bootcamp or parallels to run windows and its apps on it?

thanks again everybody for your pointers! :tiphat:

dmytro

 

[DominiConnor]

I have an aversion to running software in nearly supported environments. I want a machine that works, and fighting drivers et al was fun when I was a kid. Paying more for a slower badly supported box because it's prettier doesn't work for me.

I appreciate that Baruch is one of the better places that teaches C++ rather than quiche languages like Java, but a decent % of all quant C++ talks to Excel through the XLL or DLL intrerfaces. You can't do that on the Mac no more, and neither Numbers nor Excel/Mac have even a macro facility like VBA.

Given that people around here are learning C++, my recommendation is Visual C++ Express which is free, and easily the best environment to learn C++.
More than 50% of quant development is for Windows, so if you have to pick one, it's an easy choice. Maybe a decent Linux setup with GCC and maybe Eclipse.

 

[Uncle Max]

HP deal

By the way, HP Shopping has a new 30% off $899+ code SPECTRA2010 valid on dv2000t series 14.1" laptops.

So, you can get something like:
HP dv2000t Laptop: Pentium Dual Core 1.86 Ghz, 1GB DDR2, 160GB HDD, DVDRW, WiFi, nVidia GeForce Go 7200, 14.1" LCD, Vista Home Premium

for $633

Not bad at all.

 

[Yuriy]

The reason I bought Dell is their customer support that I had heard many good things about.

When my HP Compaq broke down, I took it for repairs to an HP repair-shop but they did not have parts and could not completely figure out what was wrong and advised me to call customer support. After spending some time with customer support, HP representative said they would send me a box so I could mail my notebook to them. The box never arrived. So I'm not dealing with HP anymore

 

[Yuriy]

Question for all: what do you think about wide-screen displays vs. normal ones? For some reason, I keep buying wide-screen notebooks

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Question for all: what do you think about wide-screen displays vs. normal ones? For some reason, I keep buying wide-screen notebooks

Their popularity increases as more and more people use a laptop as multimedia center. People use laptop to watch DVD, play games and 16:9 is the preferred screen format. You can have 2 spreadsheets side by side on a 16:9 screen.

Thinkpad has a widescreen versions as well. I prefer the 14.1" 4:3 format. I find it's more productive that way.

 

[Yuriy]

Andy, now that you mentioned it. I think that watching DVDs is probably the only reason I like wide-screen displays. However, 3 of my most favorite UK TV-series are Full-Screen, so I'm stuck with two black vertical lines on my Laptop when watching those

 

[Dmytro]

Question for all: what do you think about wide-screen displays vs. normal ones?

i like the wide-screen option because it allows for less toggling; i like having a few windows open and visible on one screen.