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Ask Slashdot: How Best To Set Up a Parent's PC?

Posted by Soulskill on from the be-a-dear-and-install-the-cloud-on-my-computer dept.

CodingHero writes "My mother uses a recent enough PC running Windows XP and has a broadband connection, but her primary method of interacting with the online world remains the AOL software. She also likes to download and use various seasonal wallpapers, screensavers, etc. Usually all this works fine and I don't get family tech support calls, but occasionally something big goes wrong. Since she lives 400 miles away, that means I get to provide phone tech support. While I can usually get something fixed through simple instructions, sometimes it's just too complicated to properly diagnose and explain over the phone (e.g., a trojan infection that anti-virus won't get rid of on its own). I'd like to set up the system so that her account is not an Administrator and that I can easily (and securely) remotely connect to fix problems, install stuff she really wants to use (after proper vetting of course), and so on. Moving to Linux or a Mac is not an option. Upgrading the system to Windows 7 and breaking the AOL habit, while seemingly the best course of action, is going to mean a lot of my time up front to explain how to do things all over again, time that I don't have a lot of right now. Has anyone else had a similar experience? If so, what did you find was the best way to re-educate a parent and/or set up a method to securely and remotely manage a system, or at least lock it down to better protect it?"

1 of 418 comments (clear)

  1. Re:iPad by ifiwereasculptor · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Ditto. My mother couldn't even transition to a laptop, since she uses e-mail a lot and demands a full-sized keyboard (preferably far from a trackpad, since it's easy to touch or rub it by mistake and move your cursor and/or click to somewhere it's not supposed to). A tablet left her profoundly disgusted with the experience of typing on an unergonomical hard surface, so a PC it is. And, after lots of time spent maintaining her XP machine, I did the unthinkable: set up Debian stable for her. Works like a charm, breakage of whatever kind is nonexistant and I don't have to worry about viruses. It did take a while to set up initially (while I figured all her use-cases and adjusted the machine accordingly), but from there it has been smooth sailing.

    For the submitter, that's what I'd add: any sort of transition will demand lots of your time, don't fool yourself. You can either try to instruct her, which will take very long, or pull an Apple and lock her machine down in a way that she can only use whatever you want her to. As long as you do a good job of predicting her needs, it's far less hassle in the long run.

    A final thought: educating an elderly citizen to use VMs is easier than one might think.