Dad died and I and my siblings had moved far away so I bought Mom a Mac Mini and paid for cable broadband. I've been using Macs since 1987 so setting up was a doddle.
The main thing that surprised me (I don't know why) is that she didn't find the mouse at all intutitive. I had to literally hold her hand and show her how to use it. As a former shorthand typist, she also had problems with "word wrap" and was continually putting in a "line feed" when it wasn't needed. But she got to grips with all this. I also had to set the screen resolution lower than I personally like, so she could see the text clearly.
For the first week I used "Chicken of the VNC" twice to help her out from home. Her main problem was that she kept "losing" windows by accidentally clicking on the red or yellow blobs.
A year later she had major problems and I had to do a 300 mile round trip which culminated in my swapping her Mini for a "spare" that I'd bought off eBay. Later, at home, I had to replace the 80GB drive inside hers because that turned out to be the cause of the problems.
Overall, it has been a fairly painless experience for both of us. I disabled automatic updates because the Mac is stable "just works", and because updates have a nasty habit of screwing things up.
I have zero experience of Windows and Linux so, in all honesty, I can't make any sort of comparison. But my vote has to go for the Mac because (apart from the Hard Drive failure) it has been trouble-free.
A few weeks ago my neighbors asked if I'd help sort out their Windows PC. I explained that I couldn't but that I could set them up a cheap Apple Mac instead, since they use the computer only for web browsing, email and letter-writing. I bought a real cheap 1GHz "Quicksilver" G4 tower off eBay and fitted an additional Hard Drive inside for backups. I did a clean install of "Tiger" then made sure it would connect to the Internet via an Ethernet connection to their router.
They commented on how fast it seemed, compared with their 2GHz Packard Bell and asked if AV software was installed. They took some convincing that it wasn't needed!
Now, some weeks later, they are still delighted. Fast user-switching is fast and easy. The whole family can use the Mac with ease and the migration from Windows has been surprisingly easy.
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Dad died and I and my siblings had moved far away so I bought Mom a Mac Mini and paid for cable broadband. I've been using Macs since 1987 so setting up was a doddle. The main thing that surprised me (I don't know why) is that she didn't find the mouse at all intutitive. I had to literally hold her hand and show her how to use it. As a former shorthand typist, she also had problems with "word wrap" and was continually putting in a "line feed" when it wasn't needed. But she got to grips with all this. I also had to set the screen resolution lower than I personally like, so she could see the text clearly. For the first week I used "Chicken of the VNC" twice to help her out from home. Her main problem was that she kept "losing" windows by accidentally clicking on the red or yellow blobs. A year later she had major problems and I had to do a 300 mile round trip which culminated in my swapping her Mini for a "spare" that I'd bought off eBay. Later, at home, I had to replace the 80GB drive inside hers because that turned out to be the cause of the problems. Overall, it has been a fairly painless experience for both of us. I disabled automatic updates because the Mac is stable "just works", and because updates have a nasty habit of screwing things up. I have zero experience of Windows and Linux so, in all honesty, I can't make any sort of comparison. But my vote has to go for the Mac because (apart from the Hard Drive failure) it has been trouble-free. A few weeks ago my neighbors asked if I'd help sort out their Windows PC. I explained that I couldn't but that I could set them up a cheap Apple Mac instead, since they use the computer only for web browsing, email and letter-writing. I bought a real cheap 1GHz "Quicksilver" G4 tower off eBay and fitted an additional Hard Drive inside for backups. I did a clean install of "Tiger" then made sure it would connect to the Internet via an Ethernet connection to their router. They commented on how fast it seemed, compared with their 2GHz Packard Bell and asked if AV software was installed. They took some convincing that it wasn't needed! Now, some weeks later, they are still delighted. Fast user-switching is fast and easy. The whole family can use the Mac with ease and the migration from Windows has been surprisingly easy.