[TriLUG] Deploying Linux to...Aunt Marge

[David McDowell]

My Mom is happily pluggin away on her new iMac G5 (pre Intel).  Prior
to that she had OS9 on an OLD G3 iMac.  ... and my Mom is NOT
technical.  Works for her, she doesn't even call me for support, ever.
 *knock on wood*  She uses Mail for her email, Safari for her web
surfing, and I highly doubt she does anything else!  My Dad does take
advantage of some of the machine's power, but only tinkering with
iLife at best.  He's still sold on his XP *sigh*.  He's just below a
power user level skill set though, and he does lots of DV, multi-track
digi audio, etc.  I do those things too, and am trying to bring him
into liking OSX for that.  Mom has never used a windows machine ever
(at least not at home).  Mac to Mac to Mac.  :D  go Mom!  (She had an
LC II before the iMac G3!)

laters,
David


On 2/27/06, Greg Brown <gwbrown1 at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll tell you what I did for my non-technical parents and sister - migrated
> them to OS X and let them be.  Both my sister and my parents have been
> burned by out-of-date or non-existent anti-virus, lost data, etc, etc, etc,
> standard stuff really when using Microsoft operating systems in conjunction
> with high-speed Internet.
>
> I gave my parents my old G3 iBook when I got a G4 iBook for my wife.  Why
> give my parents a computer?  Simple - I got tired of spending my time on the
> phone trying to diagnose "computer slowness" or any other one of a million
> technical problems that exists on Windows on a machine in Arizona.  So,
> while I could have got $X for selling the laptop on eBay I calculated that I
> was at least 99.89% probable to spend $X + $1 in my time if they remained on
> Windows doing tech support.  So giving them the computer was worth it.  And
> being free, they couldn't really turn it down.
>
> Yes, there were some technical hurdles to overcome with switching but the
> number of tech calls has decreased dramatically.  My sister got an older
> iMac (the ones that look like eMacs) so she could do iChat with my parents
> and now she is talking about upgrading to a new iMac.
>
> As they sang in South Park so many years go.. Happy happy happy, everyone is
> happy.  And happy relatives on a better platform makes for a happier IT guy
> at home.
>
> I think there will be a time when Ubuntu gets to the point that I could have
> set up my non-techie parents and sister on that platform, but it's just not
> there yet.  Close, and getting closer, but not yet.  If they lived closer to
> me instead of 1000 and 2000 miles away perhaps I could have set them up and
> got them running with the occasional house call but that wasn't an option.
>
> Greg
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