Looking for a desk top PC for 80 yr old. Help please.

zagubov

Richie-from-the-Boro wrote: »

A second hand £100 puter will do all you want, just get a 28" monitor and a HDMi & sound out video card.

For the suggested purpose your AP won't see the difference between the £100 and the phanbhoy £900

Put you money where it will benefit the end user

You don't need to spend a fortune. - you can set your MIL and FIL with a good decent second hand computer that can play videos, surf the web etc no problem. There’s lots of people here who can recommend PCs running Windows or Linux but I’m no expert in them.

They might find a mac’s easy, intuitive and risk-free. I set my dad (he’s 75) up with a second-hand one and he never has problems with it. As it’s a money-saving site, you may want to hit ebay but first register with Airmiles if you’re going for buy-it-now or register with auctionsniper if you’re going to bid in an ebay auction.

Don’t get anything earlier than a G4; G4 dual towers are a bargain now and a piece of cake to handle (a village idiot- i.e. even me- can easily install extras like cards, memory, drives in it). The G4 emac is another cutprice mac bargain but it needs to have at least 40Gb hard drive, a DVD player 1GHz chip speed and about 1 Gb memory(RAM) to be worthwhile (you can't add extras into it so easily)

Make sure it’s running at least Tiger (OS X.4) or Leopard (OS X.5), and you can download tons of free software recommended on other threads here.
Pop over to computing with bifocals website and add it onto the Safari or Firefox favourites
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/features/computing_with_bifocals/P150/
or get a book like “Tiger for Dummies”.

They could be well on their way for less than £100 – get a refurb screen as well –they’re often under £40-50. Printers - canon seem recommended highly here. Try the computer yourself a few times to get the hang of it and show them the basics- it takes minutes to learn as they’re quite intuitive machines.

macman

xxdeebeexx wrote: »

Thanks for the suggestion. They are very elderly, for their 80 years, and need a reliable phone system. My household have been on Talktalk for a number of years and the phone system used to go down frequently, sometimes for days on end. They are worried about losing their phone in case of emergency.

Dx

Eh? BT are no more 'reliable' than TT. When a phone line goes down it will be fixed by BT Openreach regardless of which telcom you are with, so what matters is the customer service end. If you put them on BT Retail the they will have to deal with' BT's dire overseas call centres in case of a problem. Take a look at BT's ratings here.
http://www.dslzoneuk.net/isp_ratings.php

kwikbreaks

macman wrote: »

And my advice would be not to go within a mile of PCW...

They've already chosen BT - may as well go for the worst and most expensive PC supplier as well as the worst and most expensive broadband.

gonzo127

kwikbreaks wrote: »

They've already chosen BT - may as well go for the worst and most expensive PC supplier as well as the worst and most expensive broadband.

a bit harsh we should at least try to limit the damage

anyways to the OP what sort of budget are you looking at (maximum) and do you need a system to include a monitor or will it be being hooked up to a TV?

anyways although i do not disagree that Linux or Mac are options, and i have set numerous people from the older generation up with Linux systems for your stated use's, however unless you know at least a little something about those OS's, i would recommend staying away from them as you will end up as the first point of call when/if something doesnt work as they expect it to stright away, and if you cant fix it stright away it will cause them some frustration, which could potentially stop them from using the computer, and dont believe the 'it just works' comments, just check these forums and you will see questions from people for every operating system asking how to do something. Nothing 'just works' 100% of the time for everything that everyone wants to do, in the way they want to do it.

sharkie

If you are not in a rush, Aldi do have reasonably offers every few months, but you have to get there an hour before the store opens. Also keep an eye on hotukdeals.co.uk

My favourite way is to give them my old one and buy something better for my self.

JasX

You could do alot worst than a bog standard Dell box with a basic spec, hook it up to a large monitor and away you go.

I can see frail 80-90 year olds hauling a large laptop with a big screen around the house a recipe for disaster

I can see them not liking a small laptop that avoids the above.

custardy

bigblackdog wrote: »

be careful getting inolved in this when anything goes wrong it will be down to you to sort out . Take them to pc world and see how they get on , would be my advice

tell me about it
It has cost me a fortune after giving my (ex!) mother in law one of my PC's
i dont know what she does with it but she has killed hard drives,corrupted windows plus more

custardy

JasX wrote: »

You could do alot worst than a bog standard Dell box with a basic spec, hook it up to a large monitor and away you go.

I can see frail 80-90 year olds hauling a large laptop with a big screen around the house a recipe for disaster

I can see them not liking a small laptop that avoids the above.

agreed in a way. i wouldnt spend a fortune on the PC,but the large monitor would be a good move

xxdeebeexx

Thanks for all the thoughts and replies. They already have a monitor that has been given by a grandson and it will definately do the job (for now anyway),

Yes, they are quite 'set' on BT .... it's what they know and trust.
I think they are looking to spend no more than £300 on a computer. We don't even know what sort of spec to look for....
I find it hard to trust sales men in Currys and Comet as they tend to steer you towards the most expensive things.

Once we have an idea of spec it should be easier to choose,
As sharkie suggests, I have heard that the Aldi PCs are value for money and often have 3 year warranty.

I will keep looking but leave the final decision to FIL

Dx

Owain_Moneysaver

Get whatever computer you want - a lot of computer shops have refurbished ex corporate Dells for under £100 inc 17" LCD monitor.

Set up a user account and an administrator account.

Install antivirus (AVG is free) and system updates.

Install Firefox. Remove all icons for IE that you can see. Put icons for Firefox on the desktop, start menu, etc. (Put it in 'startup' and it will start up automatically. Set up bookmarks for their email, BBC Webwise, local newspaper etc.

Tuxpaint is good for mouse practice. Tuxtype is quite good for typing.

Install remote access software - Teamviewer is free for personal use. Put icons for Teamviewer everywhere. Install it on your own PC. This stops you having to go round to their house every time they forget or lose something.

Go into display properties and enlarge all the text and icon sizes. Go into mouse properties and slow the mouse down. The double-click interval needs to be very slow.

Get them on a course at the local library or community centre.

Don't let them have the computer until they can start it up and shut it down properly, open/close web browser etc competently.