I bought a Chromebook for my parents which are very similar to your dad in computer skills. Over Christmas I got them set up with a Google account using my CR4

I bought a Chromebook for my parents which are very similar to your dad in computer skills. Over Christmas I got them set up with a Google account using my CR48. 1. I always disable the mobile data when I'm on wifi cause I don't want to burn up my bandwidth. Otherwise I believe that once you turn it on it will connect. (after setup of course) As an experiment, my parents are trying 3G only until they can determine a usage pattern and find that $35/month internet through their ISP will be cheaper. They do travel to visit family and have the 3G as a fallback is great. 2. On my CR48, the camera is only useful for video chat. I never found an appropriate flash based camera app to just take photos. Likewise I haven't yet tried plugging an SD card in to see how it does uploading to Picasa. 3. Battery life is awesome, I charge my CR48 every 3-4 days with light use. Even if I use it a lot, I've always lasted an entire day (but I'm not watching videos or anything like that) 4. The updates download in the background and you will see a little green upward pointing arrow on the menu bar. Click on it and you get a dialog that prompts you to restart now. If you don't ever hit the button, the next time you shutdown it will start back up with the new code installed. 5. The apps are the web app versions so it's not like Android with the navigation. My CR48 has a GPS chip but it's not turned on yet in the builds. It is close though, because people have got the daemon started and Google Maps will find your location. The other thing I like that I know their gmail password and can sign in to their account and can add apps/bookmarks and it will sync automatically to their Chromebook. I can't judge how well your father will do but I had my parents using my CR48 just fine. The problems were things that just needed practice: Using the touchpad, knowing how to close windows and recognize links to click on. I feel _much_ better about their online safety with this machine vs windows or mac when I'm trying to troubleshoot from 800 miles away. Feel free to email me if you want to discuss any other points. (email in my profile) To everyone who says just buy a windows netbook and install Chrome are totally missing the point. Yes, of course you could do that but it wouldn't work the same. If you already know how to run windows/mac and need or want native apps, the chromebook is not for you unless you want a 2nd machine. Both my wife and I have laptops that mostly stay on their respective desks now that I have the CR48. It is the form factor and the speed of booting/wakeup and the ease of switching users. Both of my young children have accounts and they can use it just fine. It really is 'our' computer instead of 'my' computer and that makes it perfect as a companion machine. Of course this is all just my opinion.