Best computer for old geezer?

You don?t get anything like that with a new ipad.

That's an interesting point. But how true is it for a technophobe with

I'm fairly computer literate (not with programming but with usage), and have been using PCs and laptops from early DOS days. When the grandchildren ask me to do something with their iPads, or I use the Acer tablet, or my new android smartphone, I absolutely hate it because it is

So how will the "old geezer", used to seeing the word "Send" or "Delete", deal with a strange icon? Yes, he might learn that => or -> means "send", or it might be something else. And when something goes wrong, he almost certainly won't know what he's done ("I clicked on "delete" by mistake, what do I do now?" That's what he might tell the OP at present, but with an iPad, no chance. An unintended touch and that's it, he won't know what's happened).

A virgin technophobe will probably be ok with an iPad, but a technophobe used to Windows? I doubt it.

Well my mother managed it in her eighties. She had a Windows laptop for a number of years but as her faculties declined, she found it easier to manage her email on an iPad.

Well nothing is certain but I would certainly try offering an iPad to an ageing technophobe before foisting a Linux system on them. ;-)

Tim

Try installing a different OS on an IPAD. its a heck of a sihght harder

My elderlly neighbour asked me to tell him how it worked. I said I wasnt prepared to support it, He sent it back. He cou8ldnt make it work

It isnt a computer. its a mobile phone with a big screen.

And its made by apple, therefore it doesnt work with anything else.

More bollox. I have that and large text works very well

The transition from windows to linux (Mint) is virtually seamless. It is designed to look and feel and act almost the same way by default. Of course being linx, if you want to spend a day making it look and work like MAC OSX. you can do that too .

The transition to touch screen interfaces is massive however. I hate them, And if my fingers are dry and cold they simply dont work

And you end up with a filthy unhygenic screen, too. At least mice and keyboards are replaceable at low cost

That's certainly untrue. It can communicate with other things via the internet. Also, I can scan music scores on my Windows PC- save them as pdfs in Dropbox and then load them into my iPad. I also have a USB memory stick with bothe Apple Lightning and USB connectors allowing me to move files between machines.

Yep guaranteed to make them feel inferior and past it. Its YOU that is fearful of Linux. Not them

once the OS is installed, which is how an Ipad *comes*, its even easier It doesn't even need a password. You as the installer will have set that up.

A preinstalled linux, like android, actually needs MORE setup than a desktop PC.

All platforms will of course need email name/password set up on them

Then MInt MATE will be less of a transition than an Ipad.

I'd go for an iPad, even a refurb from the aple store or a relatively recent one from a trusted shop. It'll auto update apps if selected and there;s not much as far as video it won't play. The OS is pretty transparent almost to the point you don;t know it's there.

Maybe a cheaper tablet would be OK, but the recent ISO15 apparently restricts things like facebook capturing your data and spamming you with product info you might not want.

Pretty safe to from a virus prospective, a bit annoying if you do a lot of cut and pasting though is my only real criticisms of the IOS, but with a little bit of patience it can be overcome.

After intial setup of password you can use finger print or slightly older iPads or face recognition for the latest iPads as ID , no need to even remmeber a password. And even if you do for some reason then it's just 6 digits (well my ipad air 2 is) which can be as simple as asking an old person what year and what month they were born in. so 193009 or whatever.

why would you want to, and it can't really be done anyway and not neccessary either. An iPad can be set to automatically update the IOS, all you need to do is type in a password no need to download and burn a CD/DVD either. No need to attach any other device to it such as a CD drive, USB stick .

try viewing a webm/vorbis/vp8 video.

Apple wont either pay licenses or reverse engineer.

It?s a tool. It?s a tool that does exactly what a lot of folk want and does it much better than a PC for the desired tasks.

Only a PC snob would get hung up over whether it technically constitutes a computer or not.

Tim

Try looking through my mother?s eyes. You can?t dismiss another person?s condition just because you have a milder form of it.

She can?t recognise faces in front of her or see food on her plate.

Tim

I am not ?fearful? of something I have no need for.

Tim

So what are those or why would an old geezer want to see them ? If I gave you a reel of cinefilm could your Linux setup play it, I doubt it but so what.

Post something and I'll try , I have linux PC I have 92 of them all just with new SSDs installed on Monday. I have a iMac and an iphone and iPad I can try.

So why should they, maybe there's nothing of interest.