Super Duper Old Person Computer

[RyanW2050]

I'm gonna set up an oldish laptop for my grandmother to use.

I want it to be as simple as possible.

I think the only buttons there needs to be are:
Email
Internet
Saved Files
Shut Down


The problems I'm going to run into are these. She's using some shitty Earthlink Dial-Up right now. I'm going to try to get cable hooked up, that would be way easier. She's also using the earthlink email service. Do you think GMail would be easier than setting something up with Outlook?


I'm still at the beginning of this process, so any ideas would be super.


(Note: She has a lot of problems with being confused on her current computer. I think some of it has to do with the fact that she doesn't fully understand the connecting process to use dial-up and the fact that her current computer is from ancient times.

 

[Brazen]

I looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooove GMail. I wish I could get a fat client to mimic Google's web client.

If it were me, I would use a linux distro with Fluxbox as the gui and only give her icons for those four things.

The only issue to keep in mind with a web client, is if her internet connection is slow or flakey, she may have a much easier time reading and composing emails with a fat client.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Boy... PERSONALLY I'd think about installing LINUX on it, boot from a READ-ONLY LiveCD, and just configure it to have bookmarks / configurations for her dial-up ISP, her GMail or earthlink mail via webmail or POP, and save/restore ONLY personal files to hard disc or something.

At least that way she almost COULDN'T get a virus or corrupt the OS or whatever since it isn't even going to need backup / maintenance, and nothing she could easily do could mess it up beyond the point that a reboot wouldn't fix.

Then you just have to keep her personal data files backed up, but not worry so much about maintaining things like disk defrags, anti-virus, OS updates, malware, corrupted OS disks if she just turns off the power at a random time, etc. etc.

Usually with most Windows configurations I find that people will end up having some kind of software / virus / system slowing down type "crisis" within a year or two and it's basically hard to help them maintain / fix that over the phone or without spending an afternoon yourself doing all the scans / updates / repairs / reinstalls etc. etc.

 

[RyanW2050]

Arg. I haven't played with linux in like 6 years. I wonder if *I* can work my way through setting that up.

 

[nerp]

With more recent distros, they're not hard at all.

 

[lxskllr]

Linux would be my choice also but if you're going to keep the 56k, that could be a real problem getting it to work in Linux. If you get cable everything should work fine. If you keep the Earthlink email, you can retrieve it using Thunderbird. My mother understands Thunderbird, and she's hopeless with a computer LoL.

 

[QuixoticOne]

Originally posted by: RyanW2050
Arg. I haven't played with linux in like 6 years. I wonder if *I* can work my way through setting that up.

Well it isn't all that hard.

I'd say the main thing would be getting one setup where it'll find the small number of local configuration files needed for the ISP dialing, the browser and email configurations, etc. on your hard disc or USB drive or whatever without modifying the LiveCD image's configuration files themselves.

I believe they should mostly have the smarts to be able to do that just about automatically if they find a partition on the writable disc with /home or whatever on it, but I'm not sure precisely about the details.

In the worst case you can just modify the LiveCD config files slightly and then burn the updated image with your customizations to the desktop / email / browser / ISP type
settings as defaults.

Usually I just use LiveCDs as portable / rescue type discs but they are quite versatile and useful for permanent "no maintenance" / highly simplified installations like the one you seek.

Check these out; most of the specifically intended "live cd" versions are marked clearly in the file name. For the others, I think they may have live cd capabilities in their default CD/DVD images, but it's possible I just linked to the wrong file.

http://bouncer.gentoo.org/fetc...too-2007.0-livecd/x86/
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook-x86.xml

http://fedoraproject.org/
http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/fedo...Fedora-8-Live-i686.iso

http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/open...GM-GNOME-Live-i386.iso
http://download.opensuse.org/d...E-10.3-GM-DVD-i386.iso
http://download.opensuse.org/d...10.3-GM-GNOME-i386.iso

http://www.ubuntu.com/products...subuntu/desktopedition
http://ubuntu.osuosl.org/relea...-7.10-desktop-i386.iso

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...n_of_Linux_LiveDistros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LiveDistros
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_USB