MBA1335 Q&A Wednesday: I am a business coach. What is the best laptop to buy?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Business lessons you can count on every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar is at home. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and A Wednesday episodes, I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over at Omar MBA Net and we'll make sure we answer it right here on Q and A Wednesday. Today's question is from Peggy and Peggy asks, I am a full time business coach and I'm looking to invest in a new laptop. What's the best laptop to buy for my business? Thanks for the question Peggy. In today's lesson I'll go into the details of shopping for a laptop for your business. Your computer in today's business world is probably one of the most important tools and most frequently used tools you're going to utilize in your business. It's worth investing. Like you mentioned, in a machine that's best for you. I know in our business with the podcast with Webinar Ninja, our webinar software, my computer is the most important tool I use, I use it every day, long hours. Pretty much every task I do revolves around it. So having a solid machine that's reliable and is a good investment for the long run is important. So we'll get into the options and I'll lay out what's important to look for when shopping for a new laptop for your business to make sure it fits your specific needs. So let's get into it, let's get down to business. So Peggy is a business coach and she's looking to buy a new laptop. She wants to invest in a new laptop for her business and she wants to know what do I recommend, what to look for. Now obviously the big question, the big elephant in the room here when it comes to computers is Mac or PC. Will you go with an Apple computer or with a Windows based computer? I was a Windows user for years, but switched to becoming a Mac user in 2006. So I've been using Apple computers for a pretty long time. Still do now. Having said that, I've been sort of out of the loop when it comes to PCs. There's been a lot of great improvements in window based computers. Microsoft has launched their own computers. IBM and Lenovo have come out with some pre powerhouse PCs that have made a lot of buzz. So in today's episode I'm going to be operating system agnostic because you may have a preference. But at the end of the episode I will you my recommendation if you're open to either one, whether it's a PC or a Mac. Now number one, you need to look at why you use your computer for your business. So Peggy said she is a business coach, so she's going to be doing a lot of coaching calls, using things like Skype or doing webinars, things like that. She's also probably going to be using a lot of cloud based apps, whether it's Google Sheets or Docs or using Dropbox. So she's gonna be using a lot of her browser. She may be doing some stuff as well as on her actual computer, whether it's spreadsheets or documents. And she might be creating some courses, video courses that is. So she'll be shooting video and possibly editing some videos on her computer. So these are the general type of tasks she's gonna do. She'll be checking email of course, and doing some administrative tasks off her browser. So we gotta look at a computer, look at a laptop and say what components really matter when it comes to the T that you do. So there are a few components or things that you'll see on the side of a box of a computer or in the spec sheet that you need to pay attention to. And some things really don't matter, it's just a matter of preference. So let's get the preference things out of the way. Monitor size totally up to your preference. If you like to stay portable, you know, 1312 inch, that's totally fine. If you are okay with carrying a larger laptop, 15 inch is another way to go. I used to only roll with 15 inch laptops. Now I've moved down to 13 and I actually don't miss the 15. The 13 is actually plenty because I can use it when I travel. It's smaller, it's easier, it's lighter. And when I'm working in the office, I just plug it into a monitor anyway. So I have a nice, you know, a nice 29 inch monitor that I project or I connect to my laptop too. So there's monitor size, nice to have. There's just the look and the aesthetics of the laptop. The style also not a huge factor. And then there's the other type of little type of features like can you tap on the actual monitor and make it a touchscreen? Does it have one of those touchscreen bars like, you know, Apple does? These are all just nice to haves, little gimmicks, little toys. But it really doesn't affect the quality of the computer or your productivity in a massive way. Now let's look at the other specs that are important that you need to look at. Number one, I would say the number one thing you need to look at is, is the ram. You might be thinking, well, what about the processor? What about, you know, the actual computer chip? The processor is important. But we have reached a point right now in computer technology where even entry level laptops have some really, really decent processors. Even the entry level MacBook Pro comes with an Intel Core i5 with 1.4 GHz. That's pretty decent. That's very good. This is why I always say look at the ram. RAM is short for random access memory. And this bas is how fast your computer can process information on the fly. Another good example of this is how well does your computer perform when it's running many applications? So say for example, you have your browser open, you have Skype open because you're doing a video call. You also have Slack open because you're communicating with your team. You also are working on a video edit and haven't closed that application. And let's say it's Camtasia. So you have so many applications open, plus you have all the tabs in your browser. RAM is what allows you to run all these applications flawlessly, with no delays, with no lag, with no pinwheeling. Now, many laptops will come with a standard 4GB of RAM, and this is kind of the standard. And you'll notice, you know, some manufacturers will bump up all the other features but will have low ram like 4 gigabytes. To save money and to keep the cost or keep the price down. My recommendation is not to buy a laptop with less than AGB. Yes, with PCs you can upgrade them later and you can add RAM. But I say when you buy a computer, you should always buy the highest specs. You can afford as much as possible. And the most important spec in my book is ram. You should definitely go at least with agb. If you can go higher, that's even better. But AGB should allow you to run several applications, even some of them quite heavy applications like video editing, with no issues. We talked about processors, you know, as long as you have a decent processor, an i5 I believe is a very good decent processor. Even the i3 is not too bad if you have 8GB RAM. But if you can go the i5, that's even better. There's the intel i7, there's the intel i9, which even is the next level. There's other processing chips as well on PCs, but anything of the equivalent is fine. The next thing you're going to look at here is your internal memory, your hard drive. Now, laptops today are coming with less and less hard drive memory. I remember about five or ten years ago they used to stock it up with all this memory. Now they understand a lot of people store things in the cloud more and more and therefore to keep prices competitive, they give you less memory. For example, it's very standard to have a laptop with 128 GBs of memory. This is how many gigabytes of storage, of file storage. You can have videos and photos and all that kind of stuff on your actual computer. Again, it's 128 gigabytes. Just to give you some sort of idea, if I wanted to buy an external hard drive, just a drive that would plug in with USB, I can get one terabyte, okay, one terabyte, more than six times as much memory as that for $100. So that is always an option if you want to save some money. This is a place where you could save it in your actual hard drive memory. And you can always buy an external drive. Now, the downside of that is that you have to buy your external drive and then you're going to have to carry it with you everywhere for your backup files. I think 256 is a good number for hard drive memory when you're buying a laptop. And then of course, if you need more external hard drive or the cloud, the next thing you need to look at is the resolution of your monitor. Retina displays are fantastic. You're going to be looking at your monitor a lot. It also helps, especially if you're doing any kind of video editing. It's going to allow you to see your videos at a better resolution so you can know and edit better. What is the next thing we're going to look at here? Well, actually the next thing would be overall build quality of the machine. You want to make sure that it's sturdy, that it's stable, that if you drop it by mistake or you actually drop your bag by mistake, it's not going to cause any damage. You should know by just holding and feeling and touching your actual laptop that you're considering if this is something that is going to break easily or is made with poor materials. One of the things I like about MacBooks and MacBook Pros is that the build quality is absolutely solid. Much of the materials they use is aluminum. And I've dropped my laptop over the years so many times and luckily everything's been fine. Now you might be saying, what about a video card, Video card specs? Well, video cards are important. If you are gaming or you're rendering really high quality videos and video editing, if you're just doing HD video 1080p like a video course, you're totally fine. But if you're shooting a documentary, if you're a filmmaker and you're doing 4k and even higher, then you're gonna want to invest in a good video card in your laptop. But for most people, the standard video card that comes is totally fine. So what does it mean? Peggy, for example, she's a business coach. She's going to be doing video calls. So she definitely needs some good ram. So AGBS should be good. So she can be running many applications at the same time. It's also going to help her with, you know, several tabs on her browser. She needs something that's well built. But you also might be saying, hey, what about your webcam? You know she's going to be doing video calls. Well, here's a secret about laptops. Every laptop out there in the market for the most part, come With a pretty horrible webcam. A lot of them just come with 720p webcams. It's not a disaster, you know, it's not a horrible webcam. You can run a call on it. It's still good. But if you're doing calls, if you're shooting videos, if you're doing webinars, it's worth you investing, you know, 50, 60, 80, $100 for a webcam. I really love Logitech's C920. It's a USB webcam. Plug it right in. Great. Now, a couple of things I want to mention before we wrap up conveniences like the ports. How many USB ports do you want to have? Do you want an HDMI port so you can, you know, hook it up to a monitor or to a tv, for example? What about any other kind of ports, like lightning ports, like on a Mac? These are things you want to consider in terms of convenience. I know the regular MacBooks are now just one port. Even the charger is that one port. They haven't gone that far yet with the MacBook Pros. But again, it's one port with the MacBook Airs as well. If that's a deal breaker for you, you may want to consider getting a dongle or an attachment that allows you to basically make it a splitter. You can plug it into the one port and it makes it into many ports like USB and otherwise. Or if it's a deal breaker, you may want to go MacBook Pro or you may want to go down the PC route. Now, what do I recommend with PCs or if you go Mac? Let me start with Mac. I highly recommend the MacBook Pro. I know that they've had a few issues in recent days with their keyboards and things like that. With some models, Apple's been very good about that, replacing people's keyboards, but that has been fixed now. So if you buy a model now, if you buy a MacBook Pro now, it should be great. There are rumors a brand new one will drop in October, so you may want to hold off until then. If you're looking to get a Mac and there are several versions of the MacBook Pro, just get the version that is within your budget. If you can go as high as possible, I would recommend that the i9 processor is fantastic. I don't think the i9 comes in the 13 inch, so get the highest possible. And the 13 inch is my personal favorite. Now, what about PC? There's actually three I recommend. The first one I recommend is a Microsoft Surface Book 2. Now the processor is the Intel Core i5 but it is a great all rounder. Now my next recommendation is the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 carbon. This thing is a beast. Super powerful as well. Not as powerful actually as the Microsoft Surface book. If you can afford the book I would go with the Microsoft Surface book but this one's a solid choice as well. A good all rounder. What type of usb? And lastly the Lenovo Yoga. Great reviews on this laptop as well. If you're a PC lover, if your.

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Today'S Q and A Wednesday's episode. Peggy, thank you for your question. I hope I've helped you know what to look for when you're shopping for your new computer for your business. If you have a question you want to ask here on the show, email me over at Omar MBA Net, we love answering your questions right here on Q and A Wednesday. Not only does it help you and your business, but it helps the other listeners that have the same question. Be a part of the community and help your fellow business builders and send over your question. Will you hold back from us? And we'll even tell you when we'll publish that episode to look out for. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. I can't reiterate this enough. When you're buying a laptop for your business, do not go cheap. Go as high end as you can as you can afford because it's going to allow you to hold on to that laptop and use it for as many years as possible before you need to upgrade, before you need to change it out. Sometimes when you go cheap, it gives you trouble and you'll have to change it out within a year or even less. Ideally, you want to be able to hold on to your laptop for three years on average. I say any more than that, that's gravy. Any less than that, you're kind of spending a lot of money going through laptops. All right, thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care.

What do the steam engine, electricity and AI have in common? They don't just change how we work, they transform entire economies. Where the Internet Lives is an award winning podcast from Google about the unseen world of data centers. This season we're going inside the AI revolution. From farmers using AI to analyze soil data to researchers discovering new medicines, a new era of AI innovation is here. Listen to where the Internet lives. Wherever you get your podcasts.