My Mom needs a new computer. She’s elderly and soon moving into an assisted-living facility (we hope). She uses her computer mostly for e-mail, although I’m sure she does some web browsing.
My family has somehow conceived the idea that I’m a Mac authority, and have asked me which Mac to recommend. I know practically nothing about Apple products or Macs.
The interest in Macs stems from the perception that they are user-friendly. Our main objective is to limit the confusion and fiddling around as much as possible, since that discourages her from using it. Ideally a simple rig that doesn’t make her wait too long to browse, and that never, ever gets updates she has to download and install, and never, ever changes the interface. Grr.
Affordability is also a concern, although less dramatically. She’ll be able to afford a pretty nice one once that money from the Nigerian prince clears customs.
One potential reason to go with a Mac is that they don’t get hacked as often. You probably don’t want Mom getting malware and having to deal with porn popups, slowdowns (and calling and asking why her computer is so slow and why she gets so many naughty pictures), and crashes.
If so, don’t go with a Mac. Given the issues that my own fairly computer-savvy 75-year-old Mom has going from one version of Windows to another, going to a Mac from Windows would be a nightmare for her. I don’t want to get into a religious discussion over whether Mac or Windows is better; all I’m saying is if she already knows Windows well enough, and is easily confused by computers as it is, just stick with what she knows.
My Mom’s had her Windows 7 computer now for a couple months, upgrading from XP, and she still calls me in confusion and wishes she had her “old mail” (Outlook Express) instead of the confusing “new mail” (Windows Live Mail or whatever it’s called.) I fear she’d give up computers altogether were I to give her a Mac.
I agree with Athena that if she already knows Windows, getting another OS is not going to make things simpler.
If you go with a Mac, they don’t really sell a bad computer. Just pick the form factor you want and buy the low end. So, if you want a laptop, get a 13" macbook air. If you want a desktop and already have a screen, get a Mac Mini. If you want a desktop with screen attached, get an iMac. You could go for a refurbished one that’s an older model and get it a bit cheaper. Goes through the same QA as the new models, and being a generation behind isn’t going to matter in the slightest for her usage pattern.
If all she wants to do is email then an iPad might be a good choice. The typing is a bit of a pain, but not too bad. If she was a touch-typist in her former career then iPad would be bad as she would likely want to smash it into itty-bitty pieces.
Several years ago, I set my mom up with a basic laptop with Ubuntu installed. I configured it to automatically open up Firefox with Gmail on startup and put shortcuts on the desktop to both Gmail and Google in case she closed the window. It was good: she couldn’t get a bunch of viruses, she couldn’t install a bunch of terrible software to slow everything down, and she could see the web and send email. She later got a wireless printer at Costco, which was easy to add under Ubuntu, so she can now pretty much do everything she needs to.
We recently got her an iPad, which I thought would be even easier, but honestly she still prefers the laptop for email and web surfing. It’s not clear how to use her printer with it, the mail app kind of sucks, and she’s not great with the touch screen.
So, for my complete technophobe mother, the Ubuntu laptop has been the best solution.
I’m 72 and have a MacBook Pro, IPhone 4 and a new IPad2. I am so happy with all of them. I have my family at my finger tips and FACETIME, well just love it ! My old friends and I talk daily. I used MS for 10 yrs when getting started, would have been much easier to start directly with Mac.
This was a key factor when I set my mom up with an iMac last year. I live on the east coast and she lives on the west coast. I had to consider which platform would be easiest for me to help with from afar.
Another plus for iMacs is that they are all-in-ones. The box contains a iMac, power cord, track pad, and keyboard. Nothing more. There is only one thing to plug in.
In general, PCs are more tweakable and have more customizations available, so this makes it more difficult to support a computer located a continent away.
When my mom has problems, we do an iChat session and she shares her screen and I fix things for her. She also doesn’t have the same virus risk level.
In contrast, my aunt has a Windows 7 laptop and she lives near my mom. I lost most of a Sunday afternoon a couple of months back walking her through restoring her machine to factory state after she clicked on a link in an email and had her machine hopelessly infected.
Because most Mac stuff is “any color you want as long as it’s black” it provides fewer decision points, which is a good thing when dealing with beginners.
Keep in mind that neither is perfect. The simple act of launching an application can be done in multiple ways in OS X (a dock icon, applications folder in the dock, Launch Pad, direct access to the application, a Spotlight search), and it is just this kind of thing that makes it harder for a beginner to grasp how to use the computer.
If it were me, I would set her up with the best iMac she can afford (get the bigger screen… it is better on older eyes). If she was going to have lots of pictures and stuff on it, I would also get her an external hard drive and set up the “set and forget” Time Machine backups.
Get a Bluetooth keyboard and stand. I use an iPad with an external keyboard now for just about everything short of image manipulation, Python coding, and scientific computing. Unless she is going to download masses of movies, the 16 GB with WiFi is more than adequate, and highly portable.
For what she wants to do, you really can’t beat an iPad. You can even preload web pages she goes to a lot as screen icons. I did this for my mom, who had never used a computer, and it worked out great.
I did mac tech support for about 9 months several years back.
I used to vehemently curse young people who bought macs for their technology ignorant grandparents. If you’re going to get it for them, at least teach them how to use the basic stuff. Don’t just drop it on them and expect them to figure it out.
I still remember one elderly woman who had called over 100 times in the first 30 days of ownership. Every. Single. Call. was “how do I do x”. When she got to me on day 30, she was so angry about it that she was demanding that I give her a new computer, because there was obviously something wrong with hers that she couldn’t figure out her email.
Of course, I do expect that the same would hold true with ANY kind of computer if the person in question had never dealt with one, and from that perspective, I can say that Apple has the better tech support. That was just my personal gripe over getting angry calls from old people who can’t figure out how to read their own damned email* or how to click a mouse and want someone else to blame it on.
For that matter, I recently sat down with my 73 year old mother and went over how to forward an email and how to add multiple recipients from her contacts because she keeps forgetting how to do it. That was on a windows netbook only using Yahoo web mail. She keeps going to her contacts and wondering where the email went, when you just need to click the forward button and then the + to add people.
Another recommendation for an iPad. My aunt, who is 86, has no problem with one (and would have bought my iPhone on the spot, except that it was too small physically).
With the latest version of the iPad’s operating system, I believe that you don’t even need a computer to set the thing up; you just need a local WiFi network, or cellular coverage, for an internet connection (depending on the model of iPad).
I’m a big fan of the iPad, but one caveat - the on-screen keyboard isn’t for everyone, and the Bluetooth keyboard still isn’t as good as a “real” keyboard. If someone is used to touch-typing (as I expect many older women are, as typing was a pretty standard skill for women in that generation), they may not like typing long things on the iPad.
Similarly, if they have arthritis or other hand dexterity issues, the iPad might not be a great choice. A mouse might be easier to manipulate.
That’s not to say that an iPad might not be a great choice. It just depends on the person, what they want to do, and their tolerance for fiddly hand gestures.
My 75 year old mother has been using Windows since 3.1. Her computer recently died and the fools at Best Buy talked her into a MAC, since she was frustrated at the Dell lemon she had and Windows 8 is so different from 7. I am really angry that the only question Tom at Best Buy choose to ask my mother about is her use of MS Office. I’ll be stopping into Best Buy tomorrow to have a chat with the manager about their sales techniques.
I personally know an octogenarian and WW2 vet who uses a Mac Mini. I can talk to him over email and he doesn’t seem to complain much if at all about computer trouble.
Get her something as close as possible to what she has. If that is XP, say, then another XP would be ideal if it were possible. I (at age 76) have finally adjusted to Win-7 and may never buy another computer since when I want one only Win-8 will be available and everything I have read about it makes me think I will hate it. No touch screens, thank you. The Start button is good enough for me. And I would run as far and as fast as I could from a Mac.
I would agree with others who say try not to change her version of Windows.
But if she’s used to XP it might be hard getting an XP computer these days. Really an iPad with a keyboard and stand wouldn’t be a bad idea at all. They are easy to use and fast. iOS program interfaces are touchscreen enabled and generally much simpler than PC or Mac programs.
Another vote for an iPad with a bluetooth keyboard and stand (you can get them integrated). My grandparents use them, and despite being comfortable with their computers, they gravitate to the tablet. Heck, I’m a pretty heavy user, and even I rarely bother to pick up my MacBook much with the iPad around.
I never had any problem typing on my Bluetooth keyboard- I used it for most of my grad school notes, and it worked like a dream.
My 86 year old mom has been hooked on her iPad for almost 3 years (she is also a dedicated Mac user).
One plus to the iPad is the number of people she keeps in touch with via Words with Friends. It has a built in ‘chat’ feature that gets a lot of use by my mom - and sister, and wife and niece and daughter…