Best macbook for my workflow

[windows12]

Hi,

I'm currently using a base early 2015 13" MBP (dual core 2,7 GHz, 8gb ram, Intel iris 6100) and sometimes it struggles with my workflow, so I'm looking into upgrading. Basically the problem is that on many occasions I have to open excel files with hundreds of thousands of words in it, with dozens of tabs and special characters (such as Chinese letters), and I get the beachball and it lags heavily to the point that it becomes almost impossible to navigate through it.

What do I need to prioritise to prevent this poor performance? Is this a matter of needing more RAM or a better CPU? I'm currently torn between the Air, the 13" MBP or the 15" if necessary, although I'd rather not spend so much.

Thanks for the advice.

 

[deep diver]

Hi,

I'm currently using a base early 2015 13" MBP (dual core 2,7 GHz, 8gb ram, Intel iris 6100) and sometimes it struggles with my workflow, so I'm looking into upgrading. Basically the problem is that on many occasions I have to open excel files with hundreds of thousands of words in it, with dozens of tabs and special characters (such as Chinese letters), and I get the beachball and it lags heavily to the point that it becomes almost impossible to navigate through it.

What do I need to prioritise to prevent this poor performance? Is this a matter of needing more RAM or a better CPU? I'm currently torn between the Air, the 13" MBP or the 15" if necessary, although I'd rather not spend so much.

Thanks for the advice.

I would go with the 15". It sounds like you will benefit from the bigger display if your spead sheets are that big. Generally, more RAM would be the way to go. I doubt that your spread sheets would be over taxing the CPU. You might try taking one of your files to the Apple store and loading into the display units to see what works best for you. I have done that a few times and have not gone wrong.

 

[windows12]

I would go with the 15". It sounds like you will benefit from the bigger display if your spead sheets are that big. Generally, more RAM would be the way to go. I doubt that your spread sheets would be over taxing the CPU. You might try taking one of your files to the Apple store and loading into the display units to see what works best for you. I have done that a few times and have not gone wrong.

Thank you for your answer, I'll try what you said about testing the display units.

 

[mroy16]

Excel is horribly optimized, especially for larger files. More RAM and a faster SSD are the only things you can really do to counteract the bad software. Whenever I'm doing large dataset manipulation in Excel, it chugs, and my peers with various Macs and PCs all encounter the same thing. A new laptop will make things better, but I wouldn't expect the problem to go away entirely.

 

[coachingguy]

16 gigs RAM should be a requirement. If you like the 13" for portability, then yes, definitely look to an external monitor; they've become so cheap with decent quality. Other than RAM and a faster HD, new or used and screen size are up to you...

 

[TGM85]

Excel is horribly optimized, especially for larger files. More RAM and a faster SSD are the only things you can really do to counteract the bad software. Whenever I'm doing large dataset manipulation in Excel, it chugs, and my peers with various Macs and PCs all encounter the same thing. A new laptop will make things better, but I wouldn't expect the problem to go away entirely.

Indeed, OP's performance problems seem to be caused by the software side of things, rather than the hardware side.

It might be worth looking into more specialised software for your data management and manipulation, rather than continuing to use excel.