Technology Which Mac laptop for fellow doing research?

[Vigileo]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Looking to upgrade from my 2010 MBP. Looking at the 2016 and 2017 lines of the MacBook, the Air, and the Pro. I’ll be carrying whichever laptop back and forth to work, using the web, opening PDFs, writing in Word, using EndNote, and having multiple applications open. Also occasional use of statistical software. Any thoughts on the best option? Also will have family photos/videos, etc but no heavy duty editing. Thoughts on the best option there?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[lord999]

What applications do you need to run besides Office on the computer? Statistical software, is it RAM heavy (Stata, R) or processor heavy (SAS)? Also, are you required to lockdown the hard drive in encryption?

If you need to lockdown the drive or use SAS, the Pro.

If you use RAM heavy statistical software, any option with 16 GB should be sufficient unless you're doing genetics or demography, and in those cases, the Pro.

If you need to do voice recording, NOT the Air.

-----------------------------
But, if you can, you really should go with a PC rather than a Mac. In the research environment, Macs do not work well as desktops and its application pool is limited.