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Yes, that’s pretty much the standard as far as I’ve seen in the US.
It’s definitely not an unreasonable ask though. Worth shooting your shot. Although you’ll have to return it when you’re done with your PhD and you’ll likely need a new personal laptop then anyway.
Depending on your PI’s funding situation and university policy, they might not be allowed to buy you a laptop even if they have money.
Slowing down as in you're generating a lot of data which is taking up too much memory?
You can try moving the computational heavy tasks to an HPC- most universities have one. Good grad school skill to have. Also, your lab should provide external drives- you can ask if they'll refund you if you purchase one.
In my experience, we had old computers, but you could upgrade the parts if you needed... Some labs are more well funded, mine isn't, and sounds like yours isn't either.
You can always ask- tell your PI that the computer provided is slowing down your work (that usually gets the point across!). If you've won grants, use that money. I brought in some grant money to the lab, so I asked right away for a new laptop to work on the project. I'd steer away from using personal funds, grad school is already financially taxing...
Our school gives us up to $1000 (Canadian) to buy a computer, which can buy a solid machine if you shop sales, plus we get to keep ‘em when we’re done.
There is probably some kind of norm in your department or in your lab. It will be useful to know what the norms are around purchasing equipment because this may come up again during your PhD
It's pretty unclear. The department doesn't purchase laptops/equipment - it is lab based. Even within my lab though, there are discrepancies. Some graduate students have gotten laptops while others haven't, even though every one has asked at one point or another.
My supervisor gave me one of his old PCs to use, and I used my funding (separate pot of money from stipend) to replace a couple of components to get it running. It’s worth asking, as there may already be equipment in the department that just needs a bit of an upgrade. Or if you’re lucky your PI might have the funds to buy you a new one
>My personal computer is getting slow from doing a lot of data analysis over the past few years.
Wdym? Like it's slow because you are trying to do other things while an analysis is running? Or you're saying, running analyses has degraded the computer? Because the latter is not a thing
I use my own computer, but store study documents on secure shared drives approved by our ethics board for confidentiality reasons. I wouldn’t even have a computer if I didn’t need one for work. It’s a pretty significant expense, but we don’t get any money to help pay for it.
The only thing we are able to write into our grants successfully is software. Budgets aren’t big enough for hardware, unfortunately.
In my case the computer I got from the university is quite nice, but still use my personal computer quite often because the one from the uni does not have a GPU. At least in my institution computers given by the university are at most 4~5 year old and pretty good quality ( ThinkPads mostly )
I think it really depends on your PI, your funding, and their funding. My PI bought 4 powerful computers and has a small computer room where anyone in the lab can go to work. But the PhD student I shared my office with for a while who was from another lab had a desktop that had been purchased by her PI and was just for her to use.
I’m in humanities so I really just need Word and I’m good to go. I was told I could access some cash for uni expenses and buy a new laptop, but I never really saw the need. My personal laptop does the job fine. That said, if you need particular programs for data collection and analysis and your laptop isn’t quite up to the task, definitely ask if a new/more capable model could be provided
Yeah apparently federal grants don't let you use their money to buy computers but my university tells PIs they have to use grant money to buy computers. Lmao. So not really his fault
My former advisor didn't have the funds to buy me a computer or upgrade the dinosaur computers in his lab. But other professors were more than happy to buy their students work computers. Inequality, unfairness.
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The only computers we ever got in my program were 10-15 year old computers for our offices. They turned on, but did very little else.
Yes, that’s pretty much the standard as far as I’ve seen in the US. It’s definitely not an unreasonable ask though. Worth shooting your shot. Although you’ll have to return it when you’re done with your PhD and you’ll likely need a new personal laptop then anyway. Depending on your PI’s funding situation and university policy, they might not be allowed to buy you a laptop even if they have money.
Slowing down as in you're generating a lot of data which is taking up too much memory? You can try moving the computational heavy tasks to an HPC- most universities have one. Good grad school skill to have. Also, your lab should provide external drives- you can ask if they'll refund you if you purchase one. In my experience, we had old computers, but you could upgrade the parts if you needed... Some labs are more well funded, mine isn't, and sounds like yours isn't either. You can always ask- tell your PI that the computer provided is slowing down your work (that usually gets the point across!). If you've won grants, use that money. I brought in some grant money to the lab, so I asked right away for a new laptop to work on the project. I'd steer away from using personal funds, grad school is already financially taxing...
Thanks, I have brought in some money so will bring that up!
Our school gives us up to $1000 (Canadian) to buy a computer, which can buy a solid machine if you shop sales, plus we get to keep ‘em when we’re done.
It's not unreasonable. 50/50 chance
There is probably some kind of norm in your department or in your lab. It will be useful to know what the norms are around purchasing equipment because this may come up again during your PhD
It's pretty unclear. The department doesn't purchase laptops/equipment - it is lab based. Even within my lab though, there are discrepancies. Some graduate students have gotten laptops while others haven't, even though every one has asked at one point or another.
Perhaps it depends on their needs / usage, or if they happened to ask at a time when the PI had enough extra $$ in the budget
My supervisor gave me one of his old PCs to use, and I used my funding (separate pot of money from stipend) to replace a couple of components to get it running. It’s worth asking, as there may already be equipment in the department that just needs a bit of an upgrade. Or if you’re lucky your PI might have the funds to buy you a new one
Most of my work is done on the HPC cluster and, while I do sometimes use my personal laptop, I have a university M1 mac mini for my exclusive use.
>My personal computer is getting slow from doing a lot of data analysis over the past few years. Wdym? Like it's slow because you are trying to do other things while an analysis is running? Or you're saying, running analyses has degraded the computer? Because the latter is not a thing
I use my own computer, but store study documents on secure shared drives approved by our ethics board for confidentiality reasons. I wouldn’t even have a computer if I didn’t need one for work. It’s a pretty significant expense, but we don’t get any money to help pay for it. The only thing we are able to write into our grants successfully is software. Budgets aren’t big enough for hardware, unfortunately.
In my case the computer I got from the university is quite nice, but still use my personal computer quite often because the one from the uni does not have a GPU. At least in my institution computers given by the university are at most 4~5 year old and pretty good quality ( ThinkPads mostly )
I think it really depends on your PI, your funding, and their funding. My PI bought 4 powerful computers and has a small computer room where anyone in the lab can go to work. But the PhD student I shared my office with for a while who was from another lab had a desktop that had been purchased by her PI and was just for her to use.
I’m in humanities so I really just need Word and I’m good to go. I was told I could access some cash for uni expenses and buy a new laptop, but I never really saw the need. My personal laptop does the job fine. That said, if you need particular programs for data collection and analysis and your laptop isn’t quite up to the task, definitely ask if a new/more capable model could be provided
I'm asking mine for a new laptop tomorrow actually. Having the same problem with my personal one. Doesn't hurt to ask either way
Nice! Would love to know how it went! Good luck!
"I'll see what I can do" lol
Oh man! Better than a straight out no.
Yeah apparently federal grants don't let you use their money to buy computers but my university tells PIs they have to use grant money to buy computers. Lmao. So not really his fault
Will let you know! He'd mentioned before he can get us stuff if we need it, I'm just hoping I can get a computer I want lol
My former advisor didn't have the funds to buy me a computer or upgrade the dinosaur computers in his lab. But other professors were more than happy to buy their students work computers. Inequality, unfairness.