The AppsLab

My father has been online for years. Probably initially through work (government/military). He's fairly comfortable if not dangerous. I _think_ I have convinced that he cannot delete the explorer folder.

Mom is another story. Since she won't go in dad's room (it's a mess of course), she wanted her own. I've used Dell for quite a while and find them fairly inexpensive. But, I knew that mom wouldn't be the only one using it.

Despite working most of her adult life with Mac like computers (newspaper publishing), she sort of missed the internet revolution via work. She had the “wire” back in her day (I still remember getting pictures off the “wire” back in the early '80s and I also remember the cool pneumatic tubes all over the place…a 10 year olds heaven!).

Anyway, I gave them a few options and they went with a Dell 17in laptop. Vista Home I think. Who uses it? Dad. CBS Sportsline in the living room while watching the Reds.

Did I answer a question here? Not sure. I haven't talked to a soul today so…

> what do you recommend when relatives ask?

I recommend a different relative! (Hi Phil!)

Nice, will have to try that out when I get them online finally.

Oh, how I wish I could justify introducing a Mac to my parents' household. Thing is, they both use Windows for work, and while I *think* my dad would love using a Mac for his photography hobby, he had an iPod briefly but traded it in for a…a…Zune. In addition to messing with my general worldview, this makes me question my general assumption that they'd get along with a Mac better than the Vista machine that they battle regularly.

All that aside, I am de facto tech support for my parents, and not having a comparable system at home makes remote troubleshooting hard. You'll be glad you picked a Mac for that reason alone. My Windows VMs are all Win2K and XP, which aren't great help for telephone-based walkthroughs.

This may be relevant, geographically speaking: the two Apple Stores nearest me frequently have long Genius Bar queues. My friend uses the South Hills Village store, and always needs an appointment. I once had to wait 40 minutes in the Shadyside store to get someone to look at my MBP for 30 seconds and declare that, yes, it *did* need a new battery. OTOH, I recently went in for a replacement power supply and they just handed me one and sent me on my way. Conventional wisdom suggests calling ahead, though.

I have had occasion to observe (translation: I'm nosy) the Genius Bar in action during my visits to the Shadyside store, and found that even during busy times the staff remains friendly and accommodating, even with less technically inclined customers.

FWIW, I've also been a customer of the two major broadband providers in town (Verizon for DSL and Comcast more recently), and found service to be mercifully, consistently average in both cases. Nothing to write home about, but okay. Verizon hasn't rolled FIOS to my part of town yet, but my suburban bandwidth-freak buddies who have been so blessed have not regretted dropping Comcast for Verizon. I'd bet that in your parents' case, the best bundle (phone or cable co.) wins.

My father has a long history with computers (in fact, the first PC *I* used was bought for “dad's work”), but more as a necessity to get things done than actually enjoying the whole computing experience. For years they had a PC which seemed to get slower on my each visit, a custom-built machine from some local basement-store.

I finally convinced him to get a Mac, so he opted for the iMac last year as my mom insisted on not getting a laptop (as this would “make him take his work with him even to summer cottage”, as the sound reasoning went). I showed him a couple of OS X basics, like how to apply system updates and import photos to iPhoto. Mom and dad both seemed more than happy with the new machine and were very impressed with some of the out-of-the-box functionality (like iPhoto's slideshows). Dad was mostly concerned with compatibility with his old Word docs and what-not, but has been able to work things out with OpenOffice and other free alternatives. The biggest migration issue was getting his years worth of Outlook Express mails transferred to Mail.app.

Migration issues aside, so far no real technical support has been required. In case there would be, I'd probably try remoting to his desktop and fixing the problem myself rather than trying to explain things on the phone like before (unless it was a network problem, of course).

That would be funny. Would you give him root or not, probably not. I can see a bunch of headaches related to an inability to sudo. You could try “sudo make me a sandwich” on him.

Wow, international phone support would be even worse, especially for a version in another language.

Re. sales tax, I don't pay it at all ever to anyone, even if they do get that legislation passed that closes the nexus loophole. Oregonians will fight tooth and nail to keep it that way.

There's that Outlook non-compatibility thing again. So not a fan.

I really like the iMac we bought my wife, but my parents had the opposite requirement. They want portability, mainly so they can hide it away and not spoil the design aesthetics of their place, which makes sense I guess.

Luckily, I have a clean slate. Nothing old to upgrade or port. This will be a true test of Mac's just works UX for brand new users. I'm a bit worried about how well it will translate for the uninitiated. We'll see.

I tried to get my dad a Dell and sadly it kept giving him problems. We junked it and got him a mac and he is very happy. The Genius bar is the key, it's more comfortable for him to talk to someone in person and his problems get solved without me (w00t).

In-person support is key, especially for people who prefer it to combing the interwebs for answers or asking in forums, Twitter, etc. My only question now is do I wait for a tablet . . . don't think they'd like one, but still, sounds like it would come with a data plan.