We have a friend who is in the generation where many her age just don’t care about computers, but use one for basic operations. Her present Dell PC was purchased in 2004 and is starting to have what sounds like hardware problems to me. She has an AOL account on a dial-up connection; yes, I mean dial-up.
She hasn’t got a lot of money, or perhaps she’s just cheap, but in either case, she doesn’t want to spend more than a few hundred for a replacement PC. Her only real requirements are:
email
some way to make lists of things (a word processor)
As far as I know, she doesn’t surf the Internet, and wants to stay with dial-up because of the cost of even basic cable service.
Anyway, she was over for T-day dinner and asked if I’d help her find a new PC “without all that fancy crap”. I’m assuming she’ll hang on to her old monitor.
I’m hoping someone either has a good recommendation, or can help me narrow things down, as there is a huge number of products out there. No laptops, please.
I thought of that, but I’m not sure she’d want to buy someone else’s problems. Amazon has used and refurbished units, but I doubt they have any warranty.
I’ve done the same thing with my aged MIL. Not a fun process.
A simple way is to grab a used machine from craigslist or a local computer repair store. Your friend’s current machine is 11 years old. Most people replace PCs a lot more often than that. You can find a 4 or 5 yo machine pretty easily for very little money. And that will push the problem out another 5ish years until this one becomes 11 years old itself.
I’m dreading the day I can no longer find working XP machines. Upgrading MIL to even Win 7 is not going to go well.
Here’s another idea …
I used to live near this place http://deals.epcusa.com/pc . They specialize in buying up corporate PCs by the hundreds when corps do a technology refresh. They clean up, test, format, OS reinstall, then resell the older PCs.
I’ve only dealt with them face to face, not online, but I recommend them highly. You won’t be buying somebody else’s malware infested mess. You will be buying Win7 though.
Definite possibility. I don’t want to saddle her with crapware or viruses or a failing hard drive. They have a selection with W7 Home already on board, as well.
Fairly trivial. Just typed in “usb dialup modem” into Google.
Though I would recommend getting her off of AOL unless she actually uses AOL-only stuff. It still cost the $30 a month it used to cost. Dialup can be much cheaper, or even free (especially if you have free long distance).
You will not find Win-7 in a new machine. They don’t make them anymore and MS will not sell it to you. And a desktop or tower will be pricier than a netbook. Also I don’t think new machines of any sort support dial-up, although I am not certain of that. In fact my latest one doesn’t even have an RJ-45 port for a wired internet connection, although there may well be an RJ-45 to USB converter.
If she gets a machine with Windows 7, the first time it updated, it will get the offer to upgrade to Windows 10. And it will insist. She (you) will have to go to extraordinary measures to avoid upgrading, as Microsoft really wants everyone to upgrade to Windows 10 and is going to make sure it happens - which is going to take a very long time at dial-up speeds.
I find it very difficult to believe that nobody is offering “lifeline” DSL or cable, which would be cheaper than the dial-up she is currently paying for. I also doubt that she’s having hardware problems as much as she’s got a machine filled to the brim with malware.
Seriously, she needs to join us in the 21st century. The best choice for her is a Chromebox. They can be bought for $169, will work with her existing keyboard, mouse and monitor. She can get it with the savings from switching from dial-up to lifeline cable or DSL.
It would take some serious effort to get her to subscribe to cable, but perhaps I can talk her into it. Problem is, she doesn’t live here in Portland, but in a town somewhat south of here, and I don’t know what the options are there.
Windows 8 might be okay, as long as I show her how to get to the desktop mode, and the machine doesn’t require her to do any hand gestures. This is a woman who is seriously stuck in the past and who is very careful with a dollar. But dial-up; jeezus on a crutch and AOL to boot. When I told her she could get her email for free through Google or Yahoo, she was shocked.
Skip Windows 8.
Either stick with a Win7 machine or go to Win10.
Many manufacturers still sell Win7 machines (older stock) or get a used one. You might look for a good local PC shop/repair person near her. They mostly deal with small business clients, but they often do trade-in deals with them, so they may have older machines that would work fine for her.
Could have sworn I posted something earlier. Short version: I’m going to try to convince her to take my PC (that I’m replacing with a Mac 27), buy a new hard drive, and have a local geek store set it up for her with W7. Her town has a local internet provider that will give her service bundled with phone for $20/month/2 years. Hopefully I can talk her into that.