Ask Slashdot: Easy Wi-Fi-Enabled Tablet For My Dad?

An anonymous reader writes "I'm looking to pick up a tablet for my father. He is in his 70s and the internet is a bit of a mystery to him, but he asked me about a way to send/receive email and watch online videos. He is not interested in getting a smartphone or changing his cheap phone plan that doesn't include data. But he is interested in getting a tablet and using the free Wi-Fi that is available in his building. Here is my question: can you recommend a tablet equivalent to those phones with the big numbers that they sell to older people? Does there exist a tablet with an interface that would be simple and easy to use for someone who has very little experience with computer GUIs?"

Comments

Re:iPad

[Cosmic Debris]

Seconded. My 85-year-old father has had an iPad literally from day 1. My brother was living with my parents when the iPad came out and he went to the nearby Apple store and got them both 1st gen iPads. My brother has since passed away and I updated his iPad to a 3rd gen model and got a matching model so I could help him out over the phone...something that has turned out to be almost unnecessary.

Yeah, it was a metric ton of money but thus far worth every penny. My mother is home-bound and my Dad is her primary caregiver. He greatly enjoys the iPad and has had no trouble using it. He has virtually abandoned his old Mac G5 tower. The iPad is a great social connection to his remaining college chums and keeps him in touch with the grandchildren on Facebook. He loves to play various word games like "Words with Friends."

To be fair, this could all be done with a modern Android-based tablet and I don't think my Dad would have any trouble with it but honestly I'm not going to change horses mid-stream. But the huge app base for iOS helps greatly plus a good deal of my brothers and sisters plus their children have iPads so things are just easier. I never thought I'd advocate for monoculture like this (or even appear to) but this has brought a great deal of joy into my Father's life as my Mother's health has gone downhill over the past few years. This alone has made the iPads worth every penny.

My advice: look at an iPad first but whatever you do don't cheap out.

Re:iPad

[tverbeek]

One advantage of getting him an iPad that can run iOS7 is the fact that it has a setting to scale the default font size up and down. It only works for apps that support it, but the built-in Mail app is one of them, so you can scale the text size up for him.