May 17, 2006

Pushing Silicon.

I hope I wasn't that obnoxiously cheerful when I was a salesduck at CowPuters (stores now deceased).

We wound up not getting anything, because I really didn't have time to research the systems we were looking at. Some very nice set of specs out there, for not a whole bunch of money, but I'm going to be the one that has to fix the thing... I want MomDuck to have a computer that she can't 'break', even accidentally.

I use computers probably 10x as much as she does, yet I've never had a virus or scumware. She's had two virii, a dialer (that called Croatia), and scumware out the yingyang, all in the last two years.

I know a new computer won't help much with that, but maybe if I make keep hitting her with the "that crepe is why you're shelling out $$$ for a new computer" message...

Still looking for advice on what to get!

Posted by: Wonderduck at 04:51 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
Post contains 159 words, total size 1 kb.

1

If you have the technical chops*, try a Linux box. I like Xandros for a good ready-to-go distro for non-techies; others recommend Ubuntu, but I haven't used it and can't recommend it of my own knowledge.


* There's nothing on your current front page regarding your technical knowledge, and I don't feel like digging through your archives to see if I see anything. First time here; came in on an anime link from Chizumatic.


Fully (and correctly) configuring a Linux box and getting whatever apps are desired is the only tricky part about using modern Linuxes. My 10 y.o. was able to get around just fine his first time away from MSWindows. The only real drawback is some web sites work only with Internet Emulsifier and some MSOffice doc features are garbled by the various free office suites.


Drop me a line if you wish further discussion or advice.

Posted by: SteveF at May 19, 2006 03:00 PM (RiE2L)

2 Me, I'm comfortable around a computer, but I don't have time to teach my mother Linux. She has a hard enough time with Windows, even after six years.

I've dallied with Linux, and can see the attraction of it, but I essentially want my computer to operate like my car: turn it on and go. I want to be able to drop in a new piece of hardware and know it'll work without any fiddling.

I'm lazy like that.

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 19, 2006 04:48 PM (y6n8O)

3 For the most part, the new Linuxes give you what you want. My wife bought a laptop recently, repartitioned, and installed Xandros 3 and reinstalled Windows XP. The Linux installation was less painful, particularly in automatically setting up the wireless network adapter and in finding the home file server. Windows' only advantage in painless setup is that it comes preinstalled on almost all new machines.

Posted by: SteveF at May 20, 2006 02:21 AM (RiE2L)

4 Oops, forgot the more important point: As for the Linux (KDE or Gnome, usually) desktop and the application interface, they're just as easy nowadays as Windows. *Different* in lots of little ways, which can be a sticking point. It's not that the Windows interface or the Word way of doing things is so wonderful or intuitive or so much better than everything else, it's just what people are used to.

Posted by: SteveF at May 20, 2006 02:30 AM (RiE2L)

5 Steve, that's exactly the sticking point. She was even scared of going to Windows XP, because it's not what she's used to.

We successfully got her a computer today, will post on it later!

Posted by: Wonderduck at May 20, 2006 10:17 AM (Ffvoi)

6 AdAware and AVG anti-virus. They are your friends.

Dialers are pure evil. I work for a phone company, and we have people calling every day saying "I didn't make these calls to Diego Garcia/Moldova/insert country here." And we say "Do you have dial-up internet?" And they say "Yes, but what does that have to do with it?" Sigh. We have reports to try to catch the things in advance (any call to Diego Garcia gets flagged, for example), but it doesn't always work.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at May 21, 2006 08:26 AM (bBAzP)

Hide Comments | Add Comment

Comments are disabled. Post is locked.
25kb generated in CPU 0.014, elapsed 0.3436 seconds.
47 queries taking 0.3342 seconds, 282 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.