No more PCs for my parents...aghhhhh

[Neilk]

I have had it with dealing with my parent's spyware problems on their damn PCs. They are getting a Mac next time. They have one XP laptop that's running at a crawl and a desktop that is infested by spyware and a another laptop the runs ok only because I recently reformatted the entire thing.

I realize that smart computing would prevent these things, but I am sick of being on the other end of the phone saying click here, click there. Enough!!! Worse yet, my dad got inpatient with the spyware and fell pray to one of their pop-ups and bought one of their programs that would "fix" the problem. When I heard that I wanted to reach through the phone and strangle him. I made him cancel his credit card, which already had two unauthorized charges for about $20 each. What a mess.

At least a Mac would save them from themselves until spyware crooks started targeting Macs.

[bivenator]

I feel your pain. My parents don't practice safe surfing either. Fortunately my bro in law is a computer guy so I the burden usually doesn't fall on me to clean up.
Mom, please don't sign up for weather-bug again

[Dottore]

We migrated both my parents from PCs to Macs a few weeks ago. They were both frustrated with their PCs. They both had heard about Macs and seen ours etc etc.

So we surprised them with new Macs. And what a mistake that turned out to be!

He's 85. She's 80. But they're sharp as tacks. Still unlearning PCs and relearning Macs at that age is something that seems almost impossible to do because at that age you do most things out of habit.

I am spending hours on the phone with them now, and am constantly called over there to help with little issues.

I wouldn't do this again with elderly people.

[widgeon13]

This all sounds very familiar, my mother-in-law (87) just got a new laptop with Vista, she's had a little trouble making the transition. I'm the one that has to deal with the calls. I actually got my wife a new laptop so I could follow what my MIL was talking about in Vista.

It's like teaching Helen Keller to fly and airplane from 1000 miles away, driving me crazy.

[johndglynn]

Same thing with senior in-law, he's been claiming some woman friend of a friend of his has been sending him rude emails and horrid links which he never opens. Checked the history and yahoo searches saved on his PC - woohoo. What are these crazy old buggers like?!

On a slightly separate tack, I can already feel myself slipping behind new technology at age 40, I just don't care about it enough to keep up with new stuff any more. My kids are gonna hate me

[Porsche]

Try linux - I installed my mum with a basic install of Puppy Linux, just for browsing the web. Simple, no-frills, and secure (obviously you need to harden it up).

[cl8ton]

Moved my In-Laws to a Mac for sanities sake and then this happened

[stomachmonkey]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

I've got a mac here on my desktop. That video is right on, but the mac evangelists will never admit anything is wrong with a mac. Just tell me please how to make a window go full screen? I use the feature on Windows like 250 times a day, yet macs have no such way of doing this. Frustrating.

-Wayne

Wayne,

This does seem to be a difference in die hard Windows/Mac users. Windows users like the fullscreen stack em approach.

Macs made their bread n butter in graphics where you share assets among many different files and across apps. Full screen windows does not let you drag n drop across files and apps. For those users it's highly counter productive.

[Mule]

If the parents pc is right, it's nearly invincible, like mine.

[cstreit]

That video is hilarious.

[id10t]

If all they need is web and email, then put Linux on it and don't look back. www.ubuntu.com

[JavaBrewer]

I agree with id10t. The latest ubuntu is darn nice. You can run from the CD before you install. It recognized all my hardware automatically except for my wireless LAN card. That took a bit of poking around to get configured. My only complaint is that fonts in Firefox look pretty terrible.

I recently moved the family over to a Mac and frankly am not very impressed. All the supposed built in capability, over what you get with a PC, is not all that impressive. Luckily I can sell the Mac for good money that can be applied to something else.

[Neilk]

Originally Posted by id10t

If all they need is web and email, then put Linux on it and don't look back. www.ubuntu.com

If they had Quicken for Linux, I might consider it. Although dealing with command lines to load some drivers is a pain in the ***. I had to use command lines to load a cheap ehome wireless PC card for one of my laptops. Otherwise, Linux looks great.

Do Mac have an option to do Remote Assistance like on XP boxes?

[onewhippedpuppy]

Can't you just load some ultra-tough anti-spyware and anti-virus programs, then set the permissions on their computer to be conservative? Similarly to how you would configure a computer for children.

[Moses]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

I've got a mac here on my desktop. That video is right on, but the mac evangelists will never admit anything is wrong with a mac. Just tell me please how to make a window go full screen? I use the feature on Windows like 250 times a day, yet macs have no such way of doing this. Frustrating.

-Wayne

Download Megazoomer; http://macupdate.com/info.php/id/21275

A simple key-command utility makes the window go full screen.

[JavaBrewer]

Originally Posted by onewhippedpuppy

Can't you just load some ultra-tough anti-spyware and anti-virus programs, then set the permissions on their computer to be conservative? Similarly to how you would configure a computer for children.

Another valid suggestion. I did this for my 70 yr MIL on a new Vista laptop. She has no install and minimal runtime permissions. No issues after 8 or so months.

[3.2 CAB]

Still laughing at that video!!! Great work!!

[onewhippedpuppy]

My in-laws' kids managed to kill their desktop by downloading too much "free" software (spyware/malware/virus/etc). For their new computer, I set up an admin account and didn't tell anyone the password. Then I set up a user account that DID NOT have permission to install software. I loaded AdAware and AVG Free Anti-Virus, setting them as conservative as possible. I also set up the internet options to be conservative. The end result is that they can browse the internet, iTunes, MSN, etc as much as they like, but have not messed up the computer. Every time I visit I scan the computer to clean it up, but it has worked well.