Hey geeks!
I would please like to ask to impossible.
Ari's mum is doing one hopefully shoudl be the first year in a very long design course. At 50+, she is reclaming her life and retraining as an architect. Hurrah for her, woman power etc. Honestly it's such a good thing.
She is however facing the following:
1. Her computer is more shit than any of you can probably imagine. To be honest, she needs a Mac for the sort of work she's doing, but at the very least needs a new PC (laptop)
2. She really really needs the most recent Photoshop.
3. They have no money. Like, spent a year in the desert paying all their money to the Middle East kind of skint.
4. She deserves only good things.
So, how to get a state of the art Macbook with Photoshop and oh also Office 2010 by the way (she can probably get this from software4students) for no more than £400 at the OUTSIDE - or what to compromise on and what possible thing can possibly be done for her?
Help greatly appreciated darling folkses.
xx
Edit: Additional clarification: She has started the course (academic year starts in Feb here) and this is based specifically on what it is she needs. Office is a slight side point, so leaving that aside for now, she specifically needs the latest version of Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. She's currently using trial versions and even they are frustrating her.They do have computer labs but there's a lot of work she needs to do from home.
She needs to have a laptop, because of a) mobility and b) her lack of space for a desktop. They're free to use PCs or Macs but have been advised that Macs are the optimal OS. For some context, her current PC was bought in 2006 (maybe second hand). It has no battery, something very dodgy about the wireless card (internet keeps cutting out), is very slow, and has a 13" screen! ANY improvement on that really would be something!
She's limping along with what she's got and *can* probably get through the course if she has to - though I think her current laptop is at risk of sudden death - but she's wasting a lot of time and frustration. Essentially, what she NEEDS is:
* Abode Photoshop latest version
* Adobe Illustrator latest version
* A laptop computer that actually works in the way that the average person would expect it to.
Ari's Dad's been looking at the deals in Barry Norman and whatnot but that's exactly what we told him - something a computer shop tells you is a good deal is probably going to actaully rip you off a lot. Also, computers are generally much more expensive over here, so we're wondering if the thing to do might be to get hold of one in the UK and send it over. (Ideally, if anyone knows of anything going second hand but still perfectly fine...?)
Ari's mum is doing one hopefully shoudl be the first year in a very long design course. At 50+, she is reclaming her life and retraining as an architect. Hurrah for her, woman power etc. Honestly it's such a good thing.
She is however facing the following:
1. Her computer is more shit than any of you can probably imagine. To be honest, she needs a Mac for the sort of work she's doing, but at the very least needs a new PC (laptop)
2. She really really needs the most recent Photoshop.
3. They have no money. Like, spent a year in the desert paying all their money to the Middle East kind of skint.
4. She deserves only good things.
So, how to get a state of the art Macbook with Photoshop and oh also Office 2010 by the way (she can probably get this from software4students) for no more than £400 at the OUTSIDE - or what to compromise on and what possible thing can possibly be done for her?
Help greatly appreciated darling folkses.
xx
Edit: Additional clarification: She has started the course (academic year starts in Feb here) and this is based specifically on what it is she needs. Office is a slight side point, so leaving that aside for now, she specifically needs the latest version of Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. She's currently using trial versions and even they are frustrating her.They do have computer labs but there's a lot of work she needs to do from home.
She needs to have a laptop, because of a) mobility and b) her lack of space for a desktop. They're free to use PCs or Macs but have been advised that Macs are the optimal OS. For some context, her current PC was bought in 2006 (maybe second hand). It has no battery, something very dodgy about the wireless card (internet keeps cutting out), is very slow, and has a 13" screen! ANY improvement on that really would be something!
She's limping along with what she's got and *can* probably get through the course if she has to - though I think her current laptop is at risk of sudden death - but she's wasting a lot of time and frustration. Essentially, what she NEEDS is:
* Abode Photoshop latest version
* Adobe Illustrator latest version
* A laptop computer that actually works in the way that the average person would expect it to.
Ari's Dad's been looking at the deals in Barry Norman and whatnot but that's exactly what we told him - something a computer shop tells you is a good deal is probably going to actaully rip you off a lot. Also, computers are generally much more expensive over here, so we're wondering if the thing to do might be to get hold of one in the UK and send it over. (Ideally, if anyone knows of anything going second hand but still perfectly fine...?)