Hi
I've been using computers since DOS but this weekend I went to help a friend who is the same age as I am 73 buy her first computer.
How hard it was to buy one is a story by itself, a certain retailer initials BB is about as organised as a, well they are really disorganized.
I really miss CompUSA.
Anyway after finding that everything that we looked at online turned out to be unavailable in their stores, (believe it or not, some computers are actually listed as "Not available for shipping, and later in the process are labeled "Not available for store pickup).
We finally set off on a long drive to the nearest store.
She wanted a 17" laptop.
After browsing we found what I think was a really good deal.
A 17" HP laptop, with an AMD dual core processor and a 500 GB hard drive for $379.
The computer looks very good quality not cheap looking at all.
It has a very clear built in camera and the sound isn't that bad, and it has Radeon graphics. The screen was very sharp looking and had good color.
She bought a HP all in one, printer, a cordless mouse and some paper for the printer etc.
She also signed up for Verizon 5G internet service.
This gave here another $100 discount on the price of the computer bringing the cost down to $279. So she was out the door with computer, printer, cord, paper, mouse, her internet service with router and a flash drive for under $600 dollars.
So now to what I meant for this to be about to start with.
We started setting the thing up at about 5 in the afternoon working from my internet connection, and worked until 10:30 at which point she went to bed and I and my wife went to watch TV for a while.
We started again at 9:00 in the morning and Worked until about 4 in the afternoon at which point we were done.
The bloat ware was removed, Norton etc, MSE and Malwarebytes was installed along with CCleaner, and Defraggler.
She had her first e-mail account set up and Live Mail was installed.
We got her wireless account set up, (had to have an e-mail account first) and finally got it to connect using her Verizon account (I have to admit this is a very fast connection).
Now that she had an e-mail address we could get her Skype account set up and finish registering everything.
We installed Adobe Photoshop Elements, Classic Shell, Rocket Dock and Google Chrome.
It installed about 80 windows updates which took forever, and then we set up her printer.
Finally when everything was up and working we made an image of the hard drive and a system repair disk. This also took forever to do.
Anyway the point is I can't imagine how someone with only a little computer knowledge could have gotten through all this.
It really brought home how complicated computers are to set up and use.
She would never have gotten through this on her own even though she has used computers at her workplace (she's a retired RN).
I guess it's going to be a while until computers are like a TV that you can just take home plug in and use.
Mike
I've been using computers since DOS but this weekend I went to help a friend who is the same age as I am 73 buy her first computer.
How hard it was to buy one is a story by itself, a certain retailer initials BB is about as organised as a, well they are really disorganized.
I really miss CompUSA.
Anyway after finding that everything that we looked at online turned out to be unavailable in their stores, (believe it or not, some computers are actually listed as "Not available for shipping, and later in the process are labeled "Not available for store pickup).
We finally set off on a long drive to the nearest store.
She wanted a 17" laptop.
After browsing we found what I think was a really good deal.
A 17" HP laptop, with an AMD dual core processor and a 500 GB hard drive for $379.
The computer looks very good quality not cheap looking at all.
It has a very clear built in camera and the sound isn't that bad, and it has Radeon graphics. The screen was very sharp looking and had good color.
She bought a HP all in one, printer, a cordless mouse and some paper for the printer etc.
She also signed up for Verizon 5G internet service.
This gave here another $100 discount on the price of the computer bringing the cost down to $279. So she was out the door with computer, printer, cord, paper, mouse, her internet service with router and a flash drive for under $600 dollars.
So now to what I meant for this to be about to start with.
We started setting the thing up at about 5 in the afternoon working from my internet connection, and worked until 10:30 at which point she went to bed and I and my wife went to watch TV for a while.
We started again at 9:00 in the morning and Worked until about 4 in the afternoon at which point we were done.
The bloat ware was removed, Norton etc, MSE and Malwarebytes was installed along with CCleaner, and Defraggler.
She had her first e-mail account set up and Live Mail was installed.
We got her wireless account set up, (had to have an e-mail account first) and finally got it to connect using her Verizon account (I have to admit this is a very fast connection).
Now that she had an e-mail address we could get her Skype account set up and finish registering everything.
We installed Adobe Photoshop Elements, Classic Shell, Rocket Dock and Google Chrome.
It installed about 80 windows updates which took forever, and then we set up her printer.
Finally when everything was up and working we made an image of the hard drive and a system repair disk. This also took forever to do.
Anyway the point is I can't imagine how someone with only a little computer knowledge could have gotten through all this.
It really brought home how complicated computers are to set up and use.
She would never have gotten through this on her own even though she has used computers at her workplace (she's a retired RN).
I guess it's going to be a while until computers are like a TV that you can just take home plug in and use.
Mike