I'm looking for a new laptop for work and have whittled it down to 3 - it needs to be portable and powerful to deal with large macro and data table laden spreadsheets and have a decent batteries:
HP ZBook 14
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon
Apple MacBook Air
I'm assuming an i7 processor and 8GB ram and preferably an SSD with 256GB - budget is c£1,500
So just wondering if any of you guys have experience of any of these laptops?
We use the HP ZBook 14 at work for CAD, 3D modelling loaded with 16GB RAM and an SSD. Not an ultra portable and It's quite heavy if you have to carry it round all day. Battery life won't be as good as the other two.
Can't comment on the Lenovo but it is an ultra portable and should be able to handle your spreadsheets.
The MacBook Air is great machine but you cannot upgrade the RAM later. The processor is an i5 with no option to upgrade to an i7. The base model comes with 4GB of RAM which you can upgrade to 8GB at the time of purchase as a built to order option. You should be able to upgrade the SSD later but there aren't any upgrades available for the 2014 model at the moment. You should get 8-9 hours out of the battery.
You mention that you will be using large macro's in spreadsheets which I assume will be excel? The Mac version of Excel (2011) includes VBA6, and macros generally work well. However, as has been the case ever since VBA was added to Office, there are differences between Mac and Windows versions, among them:
WinXL allows ActiveX controls (buttons, etc). ActiveX is currently a Windows-only technology. For compatibility, only Forms controls ("Legacy controls" in XL2007/2010) should be used.
Code that references Windows system routines obviously won't work on Macs
Code that uses the VBA MacScript command will work on Macs, but not in Windows
A very few commands have different syntax (e.g., the GetOpenFileName()'s FileFilter argument)
Code that refers to Win-only features (e.g., PivotCharts) obviously don't work on Macs.
Macs allow only one instance of a running application, so using CreateObject() to start an instance of an application may fail if the application is already running.
Might be an idea to test them on a Mac running Excel 2011 before committing.