AIBU My partner of 15 years has put a password on the laptop I bought him

[Jools995]

I have spent hours organising all my photos into Folders and thought it would make a great Fathers Day present to upload them onto the laptop that I bought him for Christmas. The photos are from our kids birth to date. However, he has put a password on and I now cant upload the pics for his FD surprise! AIBU to feel annoyed about this? He hasnt told me he has done this and I now feel that he doesnt trust me or is he hiding stuff from me?

Everything I have is password protected. I have a guest account on my Mac that others may use. I have work related emails and work connected and its gross misconduct to let others see where I work. So not only password to log in protected files as well.

I also don't have pics on my laptop. I did years ago and laptop damaged beyond repair so I lost them all.

Oh, since I typed my last, I've been given two more things to try.
Thank you both very much for that!

Accounts with administrative rights (I.e. Ability to install programs etc) should always have passwords. Its computer security 101 and is a first line defence against rogue programs being installed without your knowledge.

Having said all this, our work IT only asks for passwords to save time. :)
But in general it's a good idea. Loooooooooong passwords with different characters and that don't resemble words.

If the OP set it up and didn't put one on it won't necessarily 'have' to have one, I've got windows 10 and I've taken the password off of mine, it's pretty easy to get round the password anyway if you know how!!

SemiNormal I never thought of it like that, though I'd never look in DHs docs folder, assume he'd never look in mine and as he uses Chrome I use Firefox so I don't see anything he's logged into!

Am I the only person who'd be annoyed if someone loaded hundreds of photos onto my shiny new laptop?

Why not just upload them to a cloud service and send him the link?

Boulevard I'm glad you said that! I said the same but nobody agreed and I felt bad. I'm sure the photos are lovely but I just wouldn't want them left on my laptop. I like it fast!

mirime - sadly I only think of these kind of things as I used to write my poetry in a big book, one day I caught an ex looking through it (and he knew it was private) and I was absolutely devastated as my poetry is autobiographical a lot of the time, I ended up burning the book and losing years worth of poetry (I regret it so much now).

I'd be furious if OH went throug my laptop. I keep my mood diary that I write for therapy there, I have conversations with my friends and family, I've got my fiction and poetry.

I don't think he'd be too chuffed if I went into his either. And he'd be very peeved at a bunch of photos appearing and messing up his storage and smooth running of his machine.

I mean, each to their own, but I don't think it's universal to share accounts.

semi I'm so sorry that you (too) have experienced this sort of intrusion of privacy and the impact it's had on you....
I'll follow the link + suggestion from tonight, cos I've been up since before 5 this morning and, frankly, I'm winding down now for a bit, but....WHY? Just WHY can't people just respect others' privacy and respect boundaries? Grrrr. ps, philosophical question, that
X

I just wouldn't want them left on my laptop. I like it fast!

What possible effect would a few hundred photographs have on the speed of a laptop. Be as technical as you like: I can keep up.

Semi that is terrible. I'm a bit paranoid about someone reading private stuff but DH never has - afaik anyway, but I trust him not to!

Passwords on devices are normal surely all our stuff is passworded dhs ipad is passworded i wouldnt think he is up to something its his ipad

YABU and reckless if you think having a password is a bad thing.

Don't you have a password on your laptop/devices?

It what way is it relevant that you bought the laptop for him?

The more stuff that is on a device users more memory. The more memory is used the slower the device. Depending on how the pictures were taken a few hundred pictures can take up a lot of memory.

There is a difference between working memory and storage memory. What can slow down the device regarding storage memory is fragmentation and it has to look for where to put large chunks of information in many smaller spaces.
If your hard drive is not fragmented, and has enough free space it should be ok.

AFAIK

enid, i think that you're missing the fact, like o/p was?, that a password is required by the operating system the laptop it uses, to access it's functions ? She's now had her mind put at rest about it.

The more stuff that is on a device users more memory. The more memory is used the slower the device. Depending on how the pictures were taken a few hundred pictures can take up a lot of memory.

No, the pictures stored on the hard drive or solid state disk require precisely zero RAM. It is lack of RAM ("memory") which slows machines down.

Teaching undergraduates this stuff throws up all these sorts of misconceptions, and I do seriously wonder what is being taught to people in schools.

Neck is correct.

If the hard drive is slow then it needs defragging, never defrag an SSD as it can damage it in the long term.

Talking of defragging, can I recommend Auslogics Disk Defrag here . I use it in preference to the Windows one, it is excellent and very quick.

Its annoying that you couldnt make your fathers day thing but i think YABU for being angry or suspicious with him as many people put passwords in their laptop in case they are stolen. I didnt and when mine was stolen i had to change all my passwords for everything and my email as all these things had just been open on my laptop. He also has every right to privacy. I mean i trust my DP 100% but i still wouldnt like the thought of him rifling through all my personal things without my permission. I have passwords on my facebook and email etc... if he really wanted to see my messages and things then id let him i have nothing to hide but its just nicer to think that you have privacy isnt it? Its just respectful. If he put passwords on his phone id just think it was fair enough, everyone is entitled to do that weather they are married to you or not. I think you should just ask him about it but not in an angry way. It may be that hes just done it for security and will happily give you the password. But if he doesnt want to give you the password then im afraid i kind of think thats entirely up to him!

never defrag an SSD as it can damage it in the long term.

The write life of an SSD is for practical purposes infinite. There was someone getting themselves into a frenzy about this on MSE a while back, and a back of the envelope calculation showed that unless they were planning to keep the laptop for thirty years the chances of it mattering were close to zero.

On the other hand, the benefits of defragging an SSD are almost zero as well, so if the above doesn't convince you, there's no point in doing it anyway.

Yeah, I do know really the difference between RAM and a hard drive, but it still seems that once your hard drive starts nearing capacity, the whole thing is grindingly slow and crashy no matter how much you defrag it. I realise that may be correlation rather than causation.

Also, what we call a 'laptop' in our house is actually a Chromebook, with less storage capacity than my phone, so very strict Cloud Storage Only policy.