Allinone Pc For An Elderly Person

Post by **Nellyboy** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 1:40 pm

Hi guys, need a few suggestions for an allinone pc for an oap. She wants it simple on a budget.

Budget is around Â£700 tops.

I suggested a small computer mounted on a monitor by the vesa mount by acer or sapphire or zotac etc. Like <a href="http://www.acerdirect.co.uk/ACER_Aspire ... ersion.asp" target="_blank">this</a> with a 24" monitor to help her eyesight. Would be cheap enough I think. All she wants is web and email plus the usual utubin etc. DVD drive not required.

Thanks, N3llz.

Post by **Vomit** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 3:33 pm

Nelly
Your request seems simple enough but :::

My 86 year old granny has been a PC user for a few years, she started off with a basic low powered desktop that my sis had finished with, then she had one of my old rigs 2.0ghz athlon gig of ram, decent enough machine for browsing and e mails.

It wasn't long before the complaints about lack of speed from the PC started to come and I found myself spending a fair bit of time during my visits cleaning the bloody thing up from countless hours of surfing and the usual windows trying to ****** itself up.

She is now using my old pc q6600, 8 gig of DDR2, she is happy with no complaints ever and i dont spend any time at all sorting it out for her.

Do yourself and her a favour dont skimp on specs, what they say they need and want now wont be the same as they want in six months time, it never is.

Post by **Trig** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:07 pm

I agree with spawhore above, if the budget is Â£700 then a decent Dell machine can be had for that and will come complete with RTB warranty and the likes, building one yourself will just mean ball ache down the line..

Post by **Claw** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 9:42 pm

Trig wrote: I agree with spawhore above, if the budget is Â£700 then a decent Dell machine can be had for that and will come complete with RTB warranty and the likes, building one yourself will just mean ball ache down the line..

+1

Post by **Vomit** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 11:05 pm

wtf is spawhore ??

Post by **Claw** » Wed Apr 04, 2012 11:20 pm

Vomit wrote: wtf is spawhore ??

A whore that frequents a Spa?

Maybe it's an anagram of Rewapshe? <span style="font-family:Arial">Or "Haw Poser"? Or even a </span><span style="font-family:Arial">"Hero Wasp"</span>

Post by **Trig** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 6:42 pm

Its what people that cant type call a smawhore

Post by **Vomit** » Thu Apr 05, 2012 7:15 pm

Trig wrote: Its what people that cant type call a smawhore

That explains that then

Post by **Class--** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 12:04 am

Nelly, now I know you might just disregard this but please think about it.
What ever pc you get her stick Linux on it. I'd probably go LinuxMint. Now the reasons behind this have been mentioned by a spawhore before. Virus and malware! With all the older peeps I have to deal with in my family its normally this crap thats the problem. Linux does pretty much deal with that for ya plus it means the pc can be a little less spec'd as its not running superAntiSpyware and Avast in the background. You could easily set the machine up with very little Linux know how if it is basically web browser and emails. Also a great thing for the "cant see sh!t" thing is all icons on the desktop can be oversized.
Simply have thunderbird and firefox installed and she is set!
You could also have a windows dualboot aswell .
A great idea for the older ones is to have their desktop wallpaper cycle from the family picture folder every day or hour

I dont know if Win 7 does the icon size thing as I know diddly about win7 but heres a pic of what I mean as I do it with my Firefox icon.
For me tho the lack of having to teach them to update and run anti virus/ malware programs is a great positive

oh and throw in a printer too if they travel as online boarding passes can be arsey to printt for them and then get it to them

I had more to say but as usual my brains fried and I've forgotten lol.

Class--

Post by **Trig** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:52 am

I'd disagree with the Linux thing, they are quite likely to go out and buy themselves a scanner or a printer or a camera or something like that and plug it in and expect it all to work...

Post by **Nellyboy** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:39 am

Thank you for the suggestions my friends. It looks like I might be more involved than I thought which is fine. I might just start off with linux and take it from there. I can always stick win7 oem on it afterwards if needed. I think the key is the budget, how much she wants to blow on one or how much she wants to save.

I think I will take over my mediacentre pc to give her an example of the speed of it.

Post by **madman045** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 11:06 am

Handy website for Dell specials

<a href="http://www.dmxdimension.com/" target="_blank">http://www.dmxdimension.com/</a>

Post by **Class--** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 1:22 pm

Trig wrote: I'd disagree with the Linux thing, they are quite likely to go out and buy themselves a scanner or a printer or a camera or something like that and plug it in and expect it all to work...

Yep quite agree but I reckon its a good place to start if all u need is browser and email. I would do some research on printers as I have an all in one thingy but I haven't got linux to do anything other than print. Scanning and copying I do manually on the unit. Bearing in mind I haven't really bothered trying to fix it

If you install both windows and linux on the pc then u can have it all setup, so, if she really can't live with linux then u just change the grub to load windows instead of linux and you don't need to take her pc away to be formatted.
When my Grandma asked to learn how to use a pc at the age of 88 or something I gave up when switching the pc on was a problem

she still uses her mobile tho at the age of 94

getting her to understand that was hard but she asked for one and so I duely sorted her out

Nokias u gotta love em

Post by **Trig** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 9:35 pm

Yeah, they say email and web browsing but it rarely stops there, at which oint your looking at a backup, reinstall and then them sitting down infront of a different OS so have to start again...

Post by **Class--** » Fri Apr 06, 2012 10:17 pm

Yer there is that but if you dual boot and have the home directory set as NTFS then the windows can read all the saved data too no? Hmm there might be permission issuses that you'd need to look out for but other than that im sure is very doable.
I think Trig has good background knowledge on peoples behaviours when it comes to spec'in a pc and tbh hes probably on the money its just I find Linux can be made simplistic for someone that would really suit an iPad

Oh also make sure you set remote desktop software up and NAT the right ports in the firewall as that my friend will be a godsend