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Configuring a Windows PC For a Senior Citizen?
An anonymous reader writes "I would like to know if there are any resources on the Web or elsewhere describing how to configure a Windows PC for an older parent not living in the same household. Assume little computer familiarity or aptitude. Some stuff is obvious, like using only a few large icons for favorite Web sites, or an icon perhaps for composing email and another for checking email. Other considerations are eliminating nuisance messages from Windows update and antivirus/firewall. What works and what doesn't? Can anyone who has worked/volunteered at a senior center offer some insights?"
My father has his own business with two employees - him and his wife. He wasted years of his life (and lots of money) messing about with XP. He came to me in despair one evening, he'd had enough. I told him to try a mac (linux was not very friendly 3 years ago). Now he runs his business himself with zero IT problems and he owns about 5 macs. He still has no idea how computers work, but it doesn't stop him getting the job done.
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Unless you can get them to understand the basics of security(which means teaching them how to use a decent virus scanner, a firewall, something like Revo Uninstaller and maybe Process Explorer) your fighting a losing battle.
The problem will not be large icons and the magnifier set up, but keeping all the crap, malware, data farming toolbar add-ons and such off the machine. If you cannot keep this stuff off, you will be doing a serious maintenance every six months or so anyways.
With my own mother, I think alot of that crap she ends up with are from simply mis-clicking links, or possibly on notification windows. Hard to configure against stuff like that. You can no-script them to death, but then they have to know enough about it to let the safe stuff through.
I have just resigned myself to cleaning up my mothers machine once a year at the holidays.
Strongly agree. This is the approach I took with technically-deficient people, and it works great.
Windows is the worst choice for this set up. It literally breaks by itself, and remains by an astronomical margin the main target of crackers, spam, phishing, viruses, etc. Trying to keep it going is a lot of work.
The one (and only IMO) major advantage it has is the availability of options (software, hardware), and if this isn't important - which it isn't, in the set up you're describing - then look to the alternatives.
Agree with parent. While many /.'ers are probably using some version of linux already, it's really a good solution for parents, etc. A few years ago, my mother's PC died after a bunch of virii and finally a hard drive failure. I built a new one and told her I was tired of fixing all those problems, and she was going to try something new. Installed Ubuntu (Dapper or Edgy IIRC), made sure her e-mail/favorite websites worked and gave it to her. Aside from having to explain how to install updates, she hasn't had a problem to date.
On a similar note, I gave my grandmother an old laptop and stripped out most of the ubuntu install, and filled it with lots of games. Locked down her account so she can't screw anything up, removed all shortcuts except games. She has bad insomnia, and enjoys playing the card games/mahjong at night. Works well for her, aside from her occasionally unplugging it instead of shutting it down properly (I'm going to set it to mount / as read only to prevent this when I go there for holidays).
Long story short, seriously consider using Ubuntu, the learning curve for it is much easier than teaching them to avoid spyware/virii.
my mother's PC died after a bunch of virii
The plural of virus is viruses
I do work occasionally for the elderly in setting up WinX computers and I regularly donate my services to various individuals.
Apart from setting up their desktops as I've detailed in a previous post http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1072163&cid=26221671
you need to install some helper apps.
Avast Antivirus can be set to automatically delete/quarantine anything it finds with no user action. AVG 8 free doesn't scan chat/webcam so stay away from that if they want to use it.
Find a good Hosts file: http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm is very good.
Point their DNS to OpenDns http://www.opendns.com/ and use their filtering to stop phishing and other bad stuff. It also allows you to easily make customized error pages in case they find themselves in hot water.
I would not switch off Windows Security Centre and have updates set at a reasonable time on automatic.
Windows Media Player 11 is a must and set it to do everything.
Also, set their screensaver to My Pictures Slideshow. They really appreciate that as many have pics of grandkids etc.
Some elderly need good JPG editor. The easliest to use is Microsoft's PhotoEd which came in early versions of Office, Microsoft Office Picture Manager has now replaced it. It is much better in some regards as it can open larger jpegs, but the gui is considerably different. A bit of training helps. HP scanning software is very good as it has a decent editor inbuilt. Also Picassa 3 is my choice for a freebie.
Open up their My Pictures folder and set it up in Film Strip view and to open maximized.
IE vs Firefox: I always install Firefox and set it as default. But some apps decide to run IE, even though it is not the default. IE 6 is preferable here as it is very similar to Firefox's gui. But for security's sake, IE7 should be used and some more training required in case it pops up inadvertently. If you remove the shortcuts and pin Firefox to the Start menu, then that will be fine.
One or Two clicks?
This is a hard one. Some elderly can't do a double-click fast enough or accurately enough as they move the mouse off the icon by the time the 2nd click comes along. So you have to change the mouse timing (Control Panel/Mouse Properties/Double-Click Speed), or use the single-click approach. Try and stay away from the single click, because if they double click then most probably an editor of some description open up. This is particularly bad for pictures, especially when they are in Flimstrip mode or trying to copy and paste any other file.
The other thing is to remind them to click the icon and not the words below, or otherwise they'll start editing the filename (as Rename) instead of opening something up.
Most elderly switch things completely off. That includes monitors, speakers, modems, so check the BIOS battery every year.
They also need a checklist in turning things on. This sounds dumb, but the calls I get that the internet doesn't work because they switched their modem on last gets annoying. Switch the modem on first. By the time the modem is connected, the computer has booted and they're ready to go.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
No matter what you do to the computer, it's not enough. Take the time to write a short, concise manual (or "cheat sheet") and print it on dead tree paper, in large and clear fonts. Write in the manual basic things like how to update the system/antivirus, etc., etc.. You can always tell them what to do but you can't expect them to remember every detail well.
This is not meant to be an insult on senior people. You said these people are unfamiliar with computing and this is an approach for them to familiarize themselves with it. Human memory is unreliable, especially for unfamiliar things.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
Huh. /f
every 2 weeks at startup, and defrag every 3 weeks.
I guess I'm doing it wrong.
I started with 2 partitions, FAT32 & NTFS, installed Win2k Pro, then patched it up.
Installed Tiny Personal Firewall v2.0.15, Firefox (with adblock, firenes, and IEview plugins), SpyBot, irfanview, media player classic, WinAmp 2.95, RealVNC server 4.0, adobe 5 (this was before Foxit 3 came out), their HP all-in-one printer software, DivX, Xvid & various other codec packs, Audacity (my dads a musician), open office (my moms a writer), Shockwave, Mozilla Thunderbird, Juno (my moms been using it since it was free dial-up, she likes the interface), winzip, Winrar, 7z, notepad++, JAVA, AVG, Picasa (when it came out), and thats essentially it.
Then, a script to rar the "my documents" folder to the 1st partition at bootup once a week, incrementing rar filename each time; chkdsk
Disable all phone-home software, including windows update; to be safe, several domains are pointed to localhost in the HOSTS file. remove all IE & OE icons, put shortcuts for everything they are likely to need in the alluser profile. Select registry changes to turn off some of the more obnoxious windows stuff.
After installing all this and making sure everything plays well with each other, I then ghosted the 2nd partion to a compressed image on the 1st.
They have 2 emergency CD's; the first blows away the NTFS partition, then recreates it from the image on the 1st partition
The 2nd is KNOPPIX; if they can't get ahold of me or think that I need to look at things before they use the other emergency CD. I also encourage them to just play around with it.
This has worked perfectly for the last 3+ years; if they get suspicious about something, I just come in through VNC viewer and take a look; probably every day for the first 2 weeks, then maybe once a week, now maybe once a month, if that. TPF turned on to paranoid mode doesn't let anything get in or get installed without a pop-up telling you about it. I go ahead and update & run SpyBot whenever I come in for a peek (BTW, one of the recent SPyBot updates has started really screwing with the registry; it's optimized for XP and just causes Win2k's registry to expand); I usually update the virus definitions at the same time, and delete some of the older "My Documents" backups.
They've usedthe emergency restore CD once, about 2 years ago; I need to update the image on my next visit.
Why, yes, I AM a Pagan Libertarian.