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simPC - Your Grandparents' New Computer?
trs9000 writes "The Register has a blurb about simPC, an "idiot-proof" PC set to debut in May of this year. It seems like a step towards a thin-client world, though it is aimed primarily at the elderly. For about $400 for the box and a $13-per-month subscription, users get a box with a propietary OS and software preinstalled for online banking, spam filtering, virus detection and online storage. What users don't get is the ability to install software, burn CDs or download large files. Initial release is only for the Netherlands and Belgium."
Actually they're only buying a computer because you never write to them. Plus they would like to keep in touch with all their friends who haven't died yet.
So what would a computer designed for the elderly with money be like?
Do you think that they went out and actually asked anyone over 70 years old what they would want in a computer? Not likely. Probably just had a few focus groups of five or six 20-somethings with coffee and doughnuts throwing stupid suggestions at each other. Like "Let's make it real easy to use!" (meaning: "Let's make it real easy to buy!").
If I were really old then my body would be not functioning well, and I would not be happy about it. So what would I want in a computer?
Well, since no young people like to live the old and the middle aged people are too busy and have enough money to get away from them, the elderly tend to live alone and lonely. They have fragile bones and if they fall down they tend to stay down a lot longer than they would forty years ago.
So how about a PC with a microphone that will dial (the number that connects any telephone line to the authorities in the USA) and pre-recorded message requesting help to come to their address when they yell a specific phrase from the floor? A phrase like "Help! I've fallen and I can't move!". Or, "Help! I'm having a heart attack".
How about if the PC could interface with the medical equipment that they have bought with your inheritance money? So they could just buy the sensor part and have this $400 PC do all the digital work that all expensive microprocessors inside each piece of expensive home medical equipment is now doing?
How about an autodialer for the phone so that they can just say "Mildred? Are you home?" at the PC and have the PC dial Mildred and act like a telephone instead of having painful arthritic fingers trying to stab at little buttons that they can't see anyway on a cheap plastic phone that doesn't work well because it's been dropped so many times because it's so hard for an old person to hold?
How about a good fast flatbed scanner interface so that they can put a paper or letter on the scanner surface and actually be able to read it on PC screen in big, big letters that can be seen with eighty-year-old eyes?
If you are seriously trying to make a PC that old people will buy, then make a PC that is seriously helpful to older people.