excel on OS X

is anyone here a heavy duty user of excel on osx, i work on windows right now, but have been looking to get a new laptop, don't like the new thinkpads so i wanted a laptop with a good screen and good battery life at a lower price, friend offered me his old 2011 macbook pro for a pretty low price, i have no experience with excel on os x

things i do:

pivot tables
hlooks up
vlooks up
typical financial eq's , npv, irr, etc..
valuation/ratios etc

would i have any issues running these, i know the shortcuts are different and i would have to relearn, not an issue for me

i know this is kind of pushing it, but another thing i would like to do is run SQL for queries, just testing purposes, nothing serious like running an ERP program , it's okay if it can't do this.. though , i want to avoid bootcamp or installing win os

 

You should be able to do everything in Excel for OS X that you can do in Excel for Windows. Just be advised, you must use Office:Mac 2008 or Office:Mac 2011 if you intend on running Lion or higher. The last version of Office:Mac before 2008 was 2004, which still relies on PowerPC code which is no longer supported on Lion and up.

 

Right, Excel is the same underlying program for Windows or OS X. It doesn't matter if you want to run complex macros or just a simple SUM equation, it all works cross platform while formatting is retained. It's not like Excel for the iPad where features were taken out. I haven't specifically tested those functions (except for ratios) but I do rely on solver all the time along with various statistical functions (standard deviation, t-test, variance, median, and a cuple of others) in Office 2007 (Windows), Office 2011 (OS X), and Office 2013 (Windows). Everything carries over from OS to OS (and Office to Office to Office) without issues.

The UI is a tad different for Office 2011 compared to Office 2013 and the underlying OS X keyboard shortcuts are different (cmd-Z instead of control-Z, cmd-C instead of control-Z, there is no three finder salute...) but they can be easily learned and most are pretty straightforward. There are SQL clients for OS X that work with Microsoft's service so that shouldn't be an issue either. I haven't had any experience with them (I don't run access SQL services) but Google turned up quite a few results.

 

13-, 15-, or 17-inch? Does it have AppleCare, and how much is he asking? There is a rather serious issue that is affecting the 15- and 17-inch models, which is similar to the GeForce 8600M GT debacle from a few years ago where the GPU can become de-soldered. Apple has yet to offer extended replacement warranties as they did with the 8600M GT, so if yours is affected and doesn't have AppleCare, you're looking at $300-$600 for a replacement logic board.

 

thanks for the replies, it is a 13.3." he is asking $250, hard drive failure, grinding noise from hdd on boot, no image..

 

Even if you have to pay for a new hard drive and/or logic board, you'll still come out ahead. Not a bad deal especially if it's in decent cosmetic shape as well.

 

he will let me mess with it first since it just sits in his closet before i pay, good friend, i know!

ssd is on the way, was going to pick up an ssd anyways, hope operation is smooth