Best computer for old geezer?

No, they dont

well thats true of the grope and swipe touchscreen s*it as well.

My geriatric neighbour got an iphone,. Could I get it working. I looked at the manual "First, Insert sim card"

How? there was no instruction on where or how the sim card could be 'inserted'

After an hour I found a site on line that showed you what te pater clip thing was used for. The manual didn't tell me.

Every few weeks he used to phone me up and say that the phone wasnt working. He had accidentally slid the little mute button on tthe phone while just holding it.

Apple is utter s*it

There is a given point - and frankly he is on the cusp - where you have to tell some people 'you are too stupid to use a computer'

No, not really.

Tim

Oh, if only there was some sort of searchable database online?

You musta looked at the wrong page. Any passing school age child could have told you though.

You?ve clearly demonstrated your own lack of IT credentials.

Tim

No, I looked at every page. Ther was no mention at all., In fact there only was one page

Any passing school age child could have

Perhaps they could.

I had only used a G4 Never an Iphone

Lol!

you can get a magnetically attached keyboard, turns it into a semi-laptop.

Then you need to get out more.

F*ck all have those anymore.

I agree. The iPad is designed for people who are computer illiterate. It suits the geriatric community.

I rest my case.

Tim

and>> really struggles like hell with keeping Windows running on his PC. He>> really needs something which looks after itself and requires bare>> minimal user maintenance. I was thinking perhaps a Chromebook or else>> something by Apple. But I'm a bit out of touch. There may be something>> better out there nowadays. It's just email and Farcebook he uses>> mainly. All he's got to do is allow the thing to update its O/S, and the same for the browser. There's very little indeed he needs to do, bar "follow the prompts". Apart from that, the only maintenance he might wat to do is "delete stuff if he fulls up the disk". So what is the struggle? Is he trying to "do maintenance" that does not need doing?

Have you never seen a Windows install that gets "stuck" and refuses to update? usually it only needs a gentle nudge, other times a good hard kick in the balls.

You don't seem to appreciate how little some people know about computers, yes linux may be better, but it still stuffs itself up from time to time and if you don't know what to do you're still f***ed.

If you have to ask that, it's beyond you anyway - let alone your elderly friend. --

"There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion,and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all historical experience."

- The Communist Manifesto, Marx & Engels.

Not on my home PCs, no. I assume the chap referred to will have a standard "as purchased" setup, unless of course someone's been farting about with it...

Pardon me for asking, but are you the same entity as " snipped-for-privacy@spaced.me.uk (T i m)"

A fair point. You can alter the font settings in Doze to make system text larger (but that is into geek territory) - it ought to be made easier to do. Perhaps it has improved in Win10 I don't know.

I was quite fond of my ASUS T100 10.1" Win 8.x convertable which I mostly used as a micro portable when travelling. It was quite cute but not very powerful. I got it for the inclusive Office 2013 deal.

I hated Win 8 though. Cubist Picasso on a bad acid trip.

Metered data can be a bit of a bind when Mickeysoft keep sending out multi GB "updates" on a near weekly basis. Apple is no better in that respect - we do large updates at my brother in laws since unreliable wet string internet and multi GB updates do not get on at all well.

A tablet of some sort is probably their best bet.

(a) actually Linux Mint has only once ever in the last ten years 'f***ed itself up' with a routine upgrade, and that was when a kernel upgrade broke broadcomm wifi, because they didn't upgrade the drivers at the same time, and Linus Torvalds blew his stack so comprehensively it has never happened again.

(b) all upgrades of e.g. Firefox/Thunderbird are liable to issues whatever the platform.

(c) You are less likely therefore to experience upgrade hell with Linux than Windows, This is a matter of established fact.

(d) What the issue then devolves to is balancing that against the professional help you may need to sort it and its availability.

No 80 year old non computer literate person has a cats chance in hell of sorting out an upgrade mess no matter what the platform.

Someone is going to have to sort it out for him, so his choice really devolves down to who is going to do that an their technical background.

In the case of the broken wifi, that was a matter of using ethernet to get it on the network, and then downgrading the broken kernel - a very simple exercise with no command line necessary but definitely as beyond an 80 year old computer ignoramus as whatever is required to fix windows upgrades.

So the issue devolves down to the skill set of the OP who is presumably going to be supporting his 80 year old acquaintance.

I pointed out Mint as being the lowest maintenance option bar none I have ever installed or had to support on any desktop computer, ever.

Its up there with the old VMS installs in terms of 'just working'

It is also way easier to install than any windows install - granted that XP was the last time I installed windows

But the issue is this. No 80 year old unaided computer illiterate is going to be able to make an informed choice, or support his set up adequately, therefore the choice of what to install has nothing to do with the 80 year olds ability to support it.

The only key issues are

- how easy is it to do the routine activities of upgrading, email and social media, once set up?

- how likely is it to need intervention by someone who *can* install and maintain it?

- how hard is it for *that* person to install and maintain it?

Linux Mint wins on all three counts. In particular the extremely configurability of the desktop means you can take away nearly all the buttons and clickables that do unexpected things. And just leave what the poor guy needs to click on. In my case I have a laptop that is set up to do really only three things - listen to music surf, and watch videos and TV all via a browser, and talk skype to one friend who refuses to use anything else. Its desktop is almost icon-less, and the task bar is extremely stripped down as well.

If you can set up an android phone you can most certainly set up a Mint setup.

No, it isn't. Really Cursitor, I dunno what you have against it.

It's a lot easier to install and set up than an I phone.

You should try it.

When I was running my IT business I loved windows for desktops and Unix for servers. Later on it became Linux for servers, but desktops? no. X windows barely worked and there were few applications to run on it and peripheral support was patchy.

That was in 1997. TWENTY FOUR YEARS ago.

I carried on with windows until around 2004, when Debian linux proved to be just usable for email, browsing and word processing. I kept windows

a couple of years later first using VMware, and then Virtual Box, I managed to get rid of the Windows machine by installing XP in a virtual machine.

I also was running a Macintosh OSX setup. But support for Macintosh turned out to be none existent

'take it into a mac store' 'buy a newer mac; ' buy the later software app' 'well dont try an interface it with anything except another mac then'

I have never caught a virus. Support and code quality has simply got better and better., I switched to Mint because it had better multimedia support than debian. And I like watching videos and listening to music. To my delight is also had the simplest and best installation of any operating system, including OSX and Windows, I have ever used.

All you need to do is give the computer a name, yourself a name and password, and tell it what timezone you are in. That's it.

Now if you are a guru you can of course do a lot more. For sure I write websites, have weird and complex networking and have installed many other peculiar bits of code on it but you don't need to, to get a basic word preprocessor/spreadsheet/email/browser/drive a printer/use a scanner/ use a microphone and web cam setup

Mint is designed not for gurus, it's designed for someone who has never ever used linux before, to make the installation and basic setup as simple and as painless as possible. And they have succeeded mightily.

If you have never installed it, please don't knock it. It is a lot easier than setting up a mobile phone.

Well, I'd only suggest a chrome book if there is a decent reliable and fast connection to the internet. I think finding out exactly what his issue is with Windows first. He might also enjoy one of the overlays to windows, though I do not know if they have social media. Say, Dolphin Guide connect, its mostly meant for blind people who have no interest in computers and is a suite of applications to do common stuff easily once set up. On the other hand if he can use a smart phone, then I might suggest the Synapptics overlay for android or the voice driven in your pocket device. The more basic you get however the more limited are the tasks you can do and the less you learn about how windows works which is really pretty simple compared to the old days. Its so idiot proof that non idiots hate it. grin. Brian

If his eyesight is even a little low, I'd not suggest Linux myself. Brian

AFAICS no one has a clue how the "old pal" uses email. I know one octogenarian who uses Outlook 97.