I Think We Can Call This A Success Story

Sometime in late fall, my father started asking for a computer. For a few months, my father poked around trying to figure out what would be a suitable computer for someone who's experience with computers was about as extensive as looking at a tractor website for fifteen minutes maybe once a year.

My father pretty much knew he didn't want a Windows computer. Not like the term Windows probably meant much to him anyway, but he'd heard Matt and I rant enough to know that Windows is an awful waste of harddisk space. I knew whatever we ended up suggesting for him, he'd likely be happy with because of the lack of experience with anything... It's nice to have a blank slate to work with.

My mother, on the other hand, was a harder nut to crack. Everything she suggested with something new, more money than it was worth, and had Windows Vista on it, which she claimed she would wipe and put XP on. I guess it was understandable, XP was what was familiar to her... Though, it did irk me a little.... This is my mom, the person who's pretty adept at learning new things, I didn't see why she was fighting us on this one...

When my mom was going on vacation to Arizona for two weeks and my dad stayed home at the end of January / beginning of February, something had to be done about the computer situation. My mom was leaving with her laptop, which left the house computerless and my dad was insisting that he read his email (which previously my mother would print for him). Instead of having my parents buy a new computer right away, we decided that it would be best to repurpose Matt's nearly 10 year old computer into my father's computer, running Ubuntu Linux.

Sure, it's a little slow, but it works.

My father took to it pretty well, he doesn't do a whole lot with it... but he reads his email everyday unassisted, and sometimes surfs the Internet. My mother was trying to fight it at first, but as soon as she saw the HP print drivers and how much easier it was to set up her printer on Ubuntu, she was sold... and she's taken to it quite happily too.

The funny postscript to this is... We gave them a slow 10 year old computer, mostly to fill the void for the time being and take a little more time to figure out what to advise them to get... and when we brought it up over the weekend, the question was "The computer works fine. What do we a need a new one for?" Seriously, the computer's probably going to die of hardware failure before they give it up.