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On a parallel anecdote. Installing Ubuntu on my parents PC sure did reduce the amount of assistance they needed from me with crashes and malware. I'd recommend
by vibrunazo 15y ago
On a parallel anecdote. Installing Ubuntu on my parents PC sure did reduce the amount of assistance they needed from me with crashes and malware. I'd recommend it to anyone who needs to spend some time helping non-tech friends with computer problems :)
- maarty 15y agoAgree. I Installed Ubuntu to my girlsfrind and it was running 1 year without destruction. On the other hand I've taken away administration priviledges from my dads windows 7 and its holding pretty well ...
- rbanffy 15y agoFor my wife, I advised a move to Mac. She needed perfect MS Office compatibility for professional reasons and the computers are much prettier.
- mjwalshe 15y agoAnd much more expensive :-) and if you want 100% Office comapatability for work by a PC.
- Uchikoma 15y agoCould you show how a DELL or HP is much cheaper? I did a calculation in 2006, comparing a Lenovo T60p to a MacBook Pro, it was roughly the same. Things did not change since then to my knowledge. http://codemonkeyism.com/the-recent-lenovo-vs-apple-discussion-i-dont-get-it/ http://codemonkeyism.com/the-recent-lenovo-vs-apple-discussi...
- rbanffy 15y agoAnd don't forget to factor in the anti-malware package, the extra gigabyte of memory it'll take, the beefier processor it will demand and the beefier battery you'll need to run the whole thing. No. The Mac is cheaper in the end.
- AnthonyMouse 15y agoIt isn't a matter of comparing like for like; that isn't the problem. The problem is that the single cheapest Mac laptop is $1000. If all you're doing is web and email, you may not need a Core i5 or SSD. You can get a PC laptop which is more than fast enough for Mom usage for less than half that price, especially if you put Ubuntu on it and don't have to run antivirus.
- Uchikoma 15y ago"It isn't a matter of comparing like for like; that isn't the problem." Never heard that in a discussion. I thought it was all about comparing like to like. The OP didn't say "for reading emails". Especially as he gave the example of 100% Office compatibility (Office 2011?). Or you could compare live time value. I've broken several Thinkpads in a small amount of time, my wife uses a MacBook for more than 5 years with the newest operating system and applications. Or, if you need email, only use a phone. Or if you only surf the web, buy a tablet. Or if you only do small amounts of web and email, don't buy anything at all and go to a free library. It depends. But the argument was that a Mac laptop is much more expensive than a PC laptop for working with Office. Which it is not to my knowledge. If you don't need it, don't buy it - no argument there.
- AnthonyMouse 15y agoIs your premise that you need a Core i5 to use Office? That seems like a stretch. You can get Core i3 or AMD A-series laptops in the $500 range which are more than fast enough for Office and still half the price of any Mac laptop, e.g. this one: http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=bqct14&c=us&l=en&s=bsd&cs=04&model_id=vostro-1440 http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=bqct14...
- Uchikoma 15y agoI only can repeat myself. "If you don't need it, don't buy it - no argument there."
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- DrStalker 15y agoA PC of equivalent power and build quality has a roughly similar cost to a mac. If you're willing to cut back on the quality and capabilities there are very cheap PC options, but no very cheap Mac options. For someone who just wants to browse the web and edit occasional documents there is a lot of cutting back that can be down.
- rbanffy 15y ago> and if you want 100% Office comapatability for work by a PC. I also wanted her to be safe from viruses and malware. I think her time is well worth the price difference.
- infiniteburp 15y agoIf you really want it, doesn't linux run windows applications in some compatibility mode? Wine? Linux is definitely cheaper than Apple.
- dagw 15y agoI did the same thing on my mothers laptop a couple of years ago, but switched back to Windows a few month later after far too many complaints of "I can't view this document/power point someone emailed me" and "people can't view the document/power point I e-mailed them".
- rbanffy 15y agoInteresting... My mom seems perfectly happy with LibreOffice. I also set her up with Gmail, so she can view the PowerPoint files without launching LO.
- jamesgeck0 15y agoThe formatting itn't always preserved perfectly when going back and forth with presentations. Text moves or runs off the bottom of the slide, etc. Also need to make sure to explain about file formats, or chances are pretty good that they'll try to send a LibreOffice file to a MS Office user.
- mjdwitt 15y agoOffice can open Open Document types pretty much universally. More complex formatting is generally screwed up though, just as it is when opening MS types in LibreOffice.
- jamesgeck0 15y agoDid Office 2003 get the ODF plugin pushed to it over Windows Update? It's on the oldish side, but there are still a lot of people using it. I remember Office 2007's ODT support being rather poor, too. Most documents I tried to put through it only came through with minimal formatting preserved.
- mjdwitt 15y agoI didn't start using Linux (and therefore LibreOffice) until after I stopped using Office 2003 on any computers, so I don't know about its support for ODT. 2007 did do fairly poorly from what I remember as well. 2010 though is much better; I go back and forth between those fairly regularly. Fonts are obviously an issue, and complex formatting isn't quite right all of the time, but each suite seems to open most of the other's file types fairly well.
- jiggy2011 15y agoUntil they call up asking how to get netflix to work
- rbanffy 15y agoI'd then buy my mom a more modern DVD player. Watching movies on the computer is not for my mom at least and her TV is 9 times larger than her current computer screen (sadly, her 21" Integraph started to misbehave after 15 years)
- amcintyre 15y agoIf they've got a monitor/TV that's compatible with a Roku, just spend the $60 for that.
- ajuc 15y agoMy parents use my old PC with Athlon 2000 and 512 MB RAM, I've instaled last Kubuntu with KDE 3.5 a few years ago, and never needed to touch it since then :) The only problem so far is - once a year they need to use free windows-only application, that doesn't run in WINE, to calculate taxes. They just go to neighborns for a few hours. My sister also has Kubuntu on her laptop, but she knows how to update it, so I don't know which version she runs now :) If your relatives only use computer to browse web and write simple documents - linux requires less maintanance. At least that's my experience.
- aerique 15y agoThere's always VirtualBox for such things, but it might perhaps not run well enough on a slow, old PC.
- wolf550e 15y agoThat CPU doesn't have hardware virtualization. Emulating a PC with Windows would be very slow.
- ttt_ 15y agoInterestingly, as more government entities adopt linux and foss in general, they have a lot more incentive to provide support for that. So maybe in a couple years these government-issued software will target linux distros.
- ajuc 15y agoIn this case this isn't government-issued software. It's just some free(as in beer) software attached to law newspaper. They attach it each year with updated forms and formulas to calculate tax.
- rbanffy 15y agoIn Brazil, you can submit your tax return forms using applications that run on Windows, Linux and Macs. They probably run on anything with a J2SE runtime.
- 15y ago
- kiloaper 15y agoThis mirrors my experience. I was really surprised with my parents reaction to Ubuntu. They found Unity easier to understand than Windows. It has opened up a whole new world to them. Before they barely touched the PC, now they email relatives on a regular basis and have switched over the using government and banking services online. As an added bonus I now rarely get calls for unpaid tech support.