Staff who constantly report their computer is "slow"

[DrBeaker]

OK - Looking to see how others do this or any approaches I could use here.

 

Teacher constantly reports her computer is slow. Computer has been rebuilt before. Upgraded from a HDD and 4GB RAM, to an SSD and 8GB RAM and rebuilt. Still complains it is "slow" and "PowerPoints take ages to load"

 

My testing shows post-upgrade the computer boots in under a minute and logs on in less than two minutes. That's acceptable to me - as it's an HP 8200 Elite SFF that's 8x years old. I've already recommended a new computer, but as that's not going to happen due to budget - what else can I do? No spares due to budget issues at the moment.

 

However this same make/model of computer is the same in all the classrooms. Other classrooms - who have told me post SSD/RAM upgrade theirs is faster than before.

 

Any suggestions, recommendations etc? Thanks

[witch]

If others have exactly the same computer - can you swap hers with another one and see if she still complains? Sounds to me as if she just has unreasonable expectations of an 8 year old computer

[Lonix]

I'd like to see it go slow would be my response or "sorry no money, you can always go to the HT/Governors and ask for a bigger IT budget". Usually they go quiet.

[Dos_Box]

I would try 16GB of RAM as a final measure as Windows can be a bit finniky with just 8GB these days in some cases.

What CPU does it have?

[atcoates]

Are her powerpoints filled with photos? Could they be compressed? Then if that all fails just explain the situation regarding the computer, perhaps they'll be more accepting of the situation.

[jthompson]

Ask for some specific examples of PowerPoints that have been slow to open for her. I'm sure we've all seen some multi-gigabyte monster pptx files lurking in shares in our time. In fairness, Windows will present a 3GB pptx in exactly the same way in the UI as a 3MB pptx: the file icon isn't 10 times larger or anything.

[Scan099]

I usually say it goes as quick as the user............

[FishCustard]

Yeah, with PPTs its usually ones crammed with video that cause issues. Get her to try the same PPT on a different PC and time it.

[Jobos]

We have the 8200 in all our classrooms and they are fine for general use. As others have said it’s probably the PPT

[TechMonkey]

Ask for timings. Put the onus on them to give you evidence, they either will and you have real world data to work with, or they don't and you keep merging tickets to the original that you asked for timings and repeat your request.

 

If they provide the timings see if they are reasonable. If they are tell them that, job closed. If they are not try on a different machine and compare and contrast.

 

I bet the answer is as others have said, Powerpoints with tons of 5 Squillion Megapixel images in that haven't been compressed or 4K videos in. Don't forget (and sorry if teaching to suck eggs) that even if a picture is resized to a thumbnail or cropped it will still be the original size in memory.

[Reverend_Dan]

I showed staff how to do the compress image files in PP and that helped but in the end we had to upgrade our teaching machines from the same computers. When our 8200 were slowing to a crunch it was usually smart ink plugin for Power Point or Word crashing in the background especially if there was more than on logged on user. So I showed staff how to restart the smart ink service which fixes it for a couple of hours.

[hardtailstar]

Are they comparing that to their own home computer/laptop?

 

lots of staff do here.

[gmonks]

Like the others have said, check PPTs not too big have had that issue before. Think the record was a 1GB PPTX.

 

Also, could just ensure latest Network Drivers installed.

[timbo343]

We get it all the time when they are opening massive powerpoints - mainly the Art / Photography dept complaining about how slow the system is, even saving these powerpoints, they complain that the save takes ages.

 

Some users do need an education on how to reduce image files which in turn will make the problem disappear.

[TwistedHelixis]

Had a similar issue a few years back, but it actually ended up being an issue with Smart software and Power Point, just on her laptop.

 

Whenever I went in to see the issue, her laptop was fine. Happened to notice the issue a few months later while doing something with the laptop. Spent some time uninstalling different apps etc, even rebooted laptop, problem was the issue was not all the time. Finally worked out it was something to do with the touch software running in the smart board app, so if she had word open while the laptop was connected to the smartborad it would cause PP to run like a dog.

 

All staff had the same make of laptops and nobody else had the issue.

[mbedford]

I would try 16GB of RAM as a final measure as Windows can be a bit finniky with just 8GB these days in some cases.

What CPU does it have?

 

Sit with the customer for 20 - 30 minutes, monitor there activity doing day to day tasks. When the machine is slow to take a look at the resource utilisation (CPU\RAM\Disk Queue\Network Bandwidth). I wouldn't up the RAM to 16GB unless there was a clear demand for 16GB of RAM, IMO that's just a waste of money.

 

We have an estate of 3500 devices and less than 30 have more than 8GB, probably 50% have only 4GB. We are SSD throughout which has made a huge difference but you have already gone down that route. What speed network from client to core do you have, 1Gbps really is the target nowadays, on a bigger site I would expect to see multiples of 10Gbps between your servers and storage.

 

I would also look at where the files are being accessed from and the size of the files, a badly optimised PPT presentation can be quite chunky and no matter how beefy your PC is if you are trying to access a couple of hundred MB PPT file over a 100Mbps link, it's going to feel sluggish.

 

Remember whilst doing these checks that you trying to resolve someone's perception of a problem. Don't treat the number, treat the patient. Throwing resources at the problem is not always the best solution.

[DrBeaker]

Thanks for all the replies so far folks. Some solid suggestions here. Will read and digest when I get 5x mins!

 

Next thoughts are:

* task manager check

* network speed link/throughput/port issues