New laptop for uni student

Poppy9

In October 2013 had to buy DD a new laptop as within a couple of weeks at uni she bad dropped her old one!

Bought in a rush something that was available and was cheap (£260). Not sure of model it was ASUS from Argos and doesn't have a DVD player.

She likes it's light etc now over a year old it's incredibly slow and freezes a lot.

We are happy to buy her a new one as she's in middle of 2nd year of a demanding science course and it's essential.

She has OFFICE 365

She uses it for:

-Online test papers for course (words, diagrams and pictures)
-Uploading essays
-Uploading/downloading excel spreadsheets
-Email
-Social media
-You tube (she loves this)
-on line shopping
-research of medical articles so often pdf downloads

She has a habit of having multiple tabs open at any one time - like 20+

Budget is we will spend what is needed but would like to be around £400

She uses Iphone & Ipad mainly for music and social media.

Need it to fit in her bag if she has to take to library.

Main point is she wants one that doesn't freeze!

tavernman

Re-install the operating system / factory restore, or remove the carp that came with it and what she has installed inadvertentlyor not. My 4 year old laptop does not freeze and it is lightning quick (well ok as it was then)

Poppy9

tavernman wrote: »

Re-install the operating system / factory restore, or remove the carp that came with it and what she has installed inadvertentlyor not. My 4 year old laptop does not freeze and it is lightning quick (well ok as it was then)

Re-install is beyond her and she will say no time to back up all her files/documents etc.

She lives away and this issue has been ongoing. During the summer a techie friend cleaned it up but its still not quick, and still freezes.

rubytuesday

I bought my daughter a Lenova for Uni when her old Asus died a death and she has been very happy with it.

tavernman

Poppy9 wrote: »

Re-install is beyond her and she will say no time to back up all her files/documents etc.

She lives away and this issue has been ongoing. During the summer a techie friend cleaned it up but its still not quick, and still freezes.

Whoa what is she going to do just before her finals/dissertation has to be done and she has no backup, I feel it will end in tears, never mind what she will say, tell her to do so otherwise you will be back saying what I just described and ask the forum if we can help. Sorry to be blunt but I have been around here long enough to know how often this sort of problem occurs.

Of course freezes could be open to various interpretations, network, malware too much happening un-necessarily etc., buying a new machine is not going to help

J_B

tavernman wrote: »

, buying a new machine is not going to help

+1







(ten characters)

chib

I'd recommend she starts using cloud storage, if the free space isn't enough it's so cheap these days.

All my documents, photos and videos are on cloud storage now. If my house burns down, I'll not lose my uni work (Mature student) or baby photos and videos of my kids.

I agree with the others, back up the data and arrange to have the OS clean installed. A respectable local IT shop will do this for £40 at the most.

20aday

I concur with Chib.

Seeing as your daughter has Office 365 she has a 1TB worth of space under Microsoft's OneDrive.

Poppy9

tavernman wrote: »

Whoa what is she going to do just before her finals/dissertation has to be done and she has no backup, I feel it will end in tears, never mind what she will say, tell her to do so otherwise you will be back saying what I just described and ask the forum if we can help. Sorry to be blunt but I have been around here long enough to know how often this sort of problem occurs.

Of course freezes could be open to various interpretations, network, malware too much happening un-necessarily etc., buying a new machine is not going to help

I appreciate all you are saying. She says she uses one drive and emails herself to uni and personal email except for her lecture recordings and she's going to back them up now. Photos on icloud.

As I said a techie friend cleaned it up at end of summer and I had a go on it and it was slower than my older machine (her old machine that she dropped and I had fixed). It's just sluggish and was wondering if it's underpowered for her needs - don't know spec as machine with her.

One of flatmates told her she isn't helping herself by having so many tabs open at once but she won't stop.

She runs malwarebytes and it finds nothing.

20aday

Poppy9 wrote: »

I appreciate all you are saying. She says she uses one drive and emails herself to uni and personal email except for her lecture recordings and she's going to back them up now. Photos on icloud.

As I said a techie friend cleaned it up at end of summer and I had a go on it and it was slower than my older machine (her old machine that she dropped and I had fixed). It's just sluggish and was wondering if it's underpowered for her needs - don't know spec as machine with her.

One of flatmates told her she isn't helping herself by having so many tabs open at once but she won't stop.

She runs malwarebytes and it finds nothing.

If you could find out from your daughter what the particular model is then maybe we could help you both further?

I assume she's running Windows 8 or 8.1?

LeafGreen

it sounds to me like it is browsing habits that are to blame not the laptop. buy another laptop by all means, but I guess it will go the same way, so may as well make it another cheap one.