OT: Computers for seniors

[Bill Campbell]

On Wed, Feb 08, 2012, Bob Rasmussen wrote:
>Hi folks,
>
>I'm looking for tips on helping my 83-year-old mother with her computer 
>needs. She's very tied into her email, but that's almost all she does. 
>She's cognitively doing pretty well, but vision is a problem. She uses 
>dial-up Internet to save money, but we might be flexible on that. 

Isn't this what Google's Chrome machine supposed to address?

An iPad with a bluetooth keyboard might work well too, and would
be inexpensive without dealing with the usual Microsoft Malware.

If I were doing this, I would probably go with a Mac Mini with an
appropriate sized monitor or a Mac laptop.  OS X makes it very
easy to zoom in and out when dealing with tiny text and has good
accessibility features.

When I use a GUI mailer, it's usually Mac's Mail.app rather than
Thunderbird, primarily because of its tight integration with the
standard address book and calendar programs.  For the same reason,
I use Safari for most of my browsing, using FireFox and Chrome
primarily when doing web development and testing.

Many of the folks in the Seattle Mac users group, dbug.org, have
had good experiences with wegenermedia.com for used Macbooks and
Macbook Pros.  They even have older G4 PowerBooks.

I have a couple of PPC Mac Minis here that we're not using that I
could put a fresh copy of OS X Leopard, the last version that
runs on the PPCs, and let go pretty cheap.  They would need
keyboard, video, and mouse.

FWIW, I plan on being in Portland most of the week starting 21
February playing in a Regional Bridge Tournament that runs
through that weekend.

Bill
-- 
INTERNET:   bill at celestial.com  Bill Campbell; Celestial Software LLC
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