This lady might benefit from a resource like SeniorNet. She might
find a peer group. She'll learn things, maybe completely new things
that will develop new interests for her to pursue.
Who knows.. soon after Sue gets the PC set up the lady may go online,
order a Mac, pull it out of the box, and be online in 15 minutes and
doing all those cool things the "Mac Guy" does in the Switch
commercials!
Then maybe she'll join a local MUG and start doing presentations in
Keynote, build a blog on day trips for the 70+ crowd, publish that
book, and go on Oprah!
This link says it all in a fifteen item list that seems to cover
Sue's points of concern.
http://www.apple.com/getamac/
cb
On Sep 30, 2007, at 7:14 PM, Sue Cubic wrote:
At 12:18 PM 09/30/2007 -0500, Tom Piwowar wrote
I don't think ignorance is an acceptable defense. What if her
doctor did
not prescribe an important new treatment because keeping up with
medical
advances was too much trouble? You have a fiduciary responsibility to
make the best selection for her, not for you.
If I did not push her into this, she would not do it at all. I
foresee a very lot of hand-holding. Better that than her spending
$1200 and never using it at all.
Instead of taking upon yourself the responsibility to "sort out the
messes" why not get a computer that won't have the messes? You can
then
direct your efforts to the real challenge: teaching her how to use
the
computer.
I wouldn't know how. Nor do I want to spend the necessary hours on
her machine to figure it out.
>Considering all of this, I think she'd be safest with a cable
connection
behind a firewall
Depends on what is more reliable in her area. I think DSL is
usually more
reliable.
Not in this area. We're all too far from the phone co to get DSL,
but we all have cable available.
>all desktop icons hidden except for a word processor, "My
Documents", Firefox
and a
>stand-alone email icon.
What does she need a word processor for?
Because she likes to write. She has occasionally written articles
and submitted them for publication. She has always written in
longhand and had someone else type them for her.
What does she need an email
program for?
Because she will understand that better. I don't want to have her
launching a whole bunch of stuff at once. Her grown kids and
grands are far away, and she will want to receive photos. I want a
mail program that will detach the photos and file them, so at least
I can find them.
Keep it simple. Set her up with Gmail. If she must print out
a letter she can type it in Gmail and print from there. I would
have the
computer automatically launch FireFox and make the home page
Gmail. Put
some icons at the bookmarks toolbar for the other things she
needs. Keep
it simple.
That's what I plan to do. Manually launch a browser with a blank
page and teach her to use bookmarks. And not confuse it with her
email.
With a very basic understanding of how it really works, she just
might progress. By setting up "magic" in the beginning, she has no
hope of learning. I deal with too many people like that all the time.
Sue
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