Friend recently purchased a Acer V3 for school, it's pretty bad. Any alternative options?

[fren.]

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Acer-Silve...64-Bi/25863496

Right out of the box it gave her issues with freezing randomly and delayed response times. Internet connection was pretty slow, too. She's pretty frustrated at basically getting a lemon (did a full reset and it didn't change much); she only plans on using it for school and heavy web browsing/music/movies. Was hoping to not exceed $500.

[Ksandra]

she only plans on using it for school and heavy web browsing/music/movies. Was hoping to not exceed $500.

I am not a huge computer geek, my husband usually handles this stuff. BUT, when I went back to graduate school I wanted a laptop so I could do work on campus. So we went to Best Buy and bought a toshiba laptop for $250.

Not sure if this is the same model, but it looks exactly like mine:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/satellit...ptop&cp=1&lp=5

Thing was perfect for me. Feels like a piece of cheap plastic, but it has lasted me almost three years now, with zero issues. Did everything I needed it to do (and still does) without issues. I was expecting it to just last that one year, but I really think this thing is going to last forever.

Hell, for awhile when old desktop borked, I could even play wow on this thing lmao.

So anyway, take it with a grain of salt, but seriously, if it's just for work, don't need anything fancy, and $250 is a really good price for what this thing does.

[Totien]

It's pretty easy to stay under a $500 budget if that's all it's gonna be used for. Honestly that's not a bad machine specwise. You can have her try just a regular exchange for another one. Whatever machine she goes with, I'd recommend getting someone run Ccleaner on it before ANYTHING. Getting rid of all the crap the manufacturer put on and optimizing the startup of any big name brand computer makes all the difference in the world.

[Intervention]

It's pretty easy to stay under a $500 budget if that's all it's gonna be used for. Honestly that's not a bad machine specwise. You can have her try just a regular exchange for another one. Whatever machine she goes with, I'd recommend getting someone run Ccleaner on it before ANYTHING. Getting rid of all the crap the manufacturer put on and optimizing the startup of any big name brand computer makes all the difference in the world.

Second this, bloatware is a huge resource hog and is worth getting rid of. The only reason why laptops get so cheap is cause of said bloatware.

Another option to look in to are Chromebooks. Upside, really fast boots and long battery life for their price. Downside, you generally need to have a consistent internet connection. Though some "apps" like Google drive have offline support.

[Iku]

Just do CCleaner and remove all the craps that comes with computer. Go to msconfig and do the minimum start up. Install Avast and Malwarebytes.

[Totien]

That's a little redundant. If you run Ccleaner thoroughly, you won't have to do msconfig. I usually run a combo of Malwarebytes and SuperAntiSpyware, but Avast is nearly as good.

[Tajin]

Get a laptop with 8Gb of ram if you getting a new one. Rest of specs kinda dont matter.