How Can SHE Function With That Many Tabs?!

A user opens a ticket about her laptop being slow. Her laptop is the same model as mine, issued roughly around the same date, same amount of RAM, everything. I’ll be the first to admit I have some really, really terrible habits when it comes to keeping tabs open. But I remote into this user’s machine and… it’s really slow. Like, I start Task Manager, and I have time to go get a glass of water before it’s started.

I spend some time checking out the machine. She has 8 GB of RAM, but she’s got like fifty Chrome tabs open across five windows, about ten PDFs open in Acrobat Reader, and a dozen or so different Word and Excel documents open, and none of it minimized. Task Manager reports that her RAM is capped out, in addition to about 5 GB of page files. My final check is the CPU uptime.

I’m disappointed in myself normally for having a CPU uptime on my personal PC that’s right now at five days. But this woman? Try twenty-five days. I don’t think she’s ever shut down this machine in her life. No wonder it’s slow; she’s basically torturing the d*** thing.

After I’m done with my check, I wait for the user to get back to her laptop because, of course, she basically said, “I’m going on my break; remote in and fix it, thanks.”

She calls when she gets back.

Me: “I’ve had a look at your computer, and I’ve identified three possible reasons your PC is slow—”

User: “Have you fixed it? It’s still slow.”

Me: “Yes, it’s still slow. I was just about to explain why it’s slow and how you can prevent it from being slow in the future—”

User: “But you are IT, not me. Can’t you fix it?”

Me: “I can fix it, but you’d need to save your work first. Firstly, you have too many tabs open in Chrome—”

User: “I need all of them.”

Me: “Do you need all of them right now? Or could you close some of them and reopen them when you need them?”

User: “No, I need them all. Just fix it.”

Me: “Okay, well, the other thing is that you only have 8 gb of RAM. You can’t have this many things open at once with only 8 gb of RAM.”

User: “Can you increase the RAM?”

Me: “Perhaps, but you’ll need to get your manager to approve it, and it’ll come out of your department’s budget. And they’ll contact me and I’ll tell them that you keep fifty tabs open, and that if you stop that, it might speed up.”

User: “Then I’ll get more RAM. Is that it?”

Me: “Well, there is one last fix that I can attempt. You haven’t shut down your computer in forever. If you reboot your machine it might speed up.”

User: “I close the lid every day. Is that not enough?”

Me: “No, it isn’t. Here’s how you shut it down properly.”

I remotely show her the shutdown button in the Start menu

Me: “Do this every day when you leave for home. When you next use the machine, press the power button on the machine to turn it back on. Your laptop will be faster then.”

User: “Okay, thanks, then.” *Hangs up*

I never did hear from the manager, so I’m guessing she decided to close some tabs?