Answering her question
Her Windows™ machine is having lots of little problems, so I order a replacement on eBay. It comes with XP on it, but I’ll wipe the drive, reload XP from scratch, put her favorite software on it, and copy the drive to another drive as a backup. With some extra ram, total investment will be $150.
I could just rebuild her current machine, but it would be out of commission for a while as I tweak it. Trust me, no one wants that. Better to plunk in a replacement.
She asks; “Are we ever going to get to the point where we just go to the store and buy a new computer?
OK, let’s do that. We’ll plunk down $600 and get a machine with Vista Home on it. But it also comes with trialware and crapware that I’ll have to figure out how to uninstall. Then install her favorite software. Then I get to help her learn to use Vista – oh, joy! – when I’m not all that swooft on Vista myself. Frankly I’m hoping to skip Vista altogether; from my admittedly limited experience, it isn’t exactly Microsoft’s finest moment.
Then the Vista machine has the same short life as the XP machine. I call it MTBR, or Mean Time Between Rebuilds. So I spent an extra $450… why?
You may be wondering, “why not start her on Ubuntu?”, which I use on my desktop machine. Because tech support between husband and wife isn’t exactly marital bliss. It can even be stressful, in fact, so I’m procrastinating. But at some point, it’ll be worth it.
UPDATES:
- Check out David’s experience with moving (his) family to Linux.
My mother has been using the PC I built for her some six or seven years ago. I built them a newer PC a couple of years back, but my dad pretty much monopolizes it so Mom uses the old one.
It’s finally getting to the point where it’s too slow even for her so she asked me to build her a new one. I just placed the order for the parts yesterday. Case, motherboard, 2GB DDR2 RAM, dual core processor, DVD burner, 320GB hard drive, low-end Radeon video card, and a low-profile CPU cooler came out to just this side of $400 after shipping.
Not too shabby for a DIY.
I agree – computer support between spouses is stressful :grrr:
But, after some recent issues with our Internet access which I could not prove were not virus related, I switched the family to Slackware Linux (my choice of Linux distribution – YMMV). The kids have enjoyed the new gaming options, and I’ve been able to demonstrate new versions of the software they want to use in many cases. Then an install of Wine to (hopefully) run their old (read minimal technology needs) Windows games, and I think we’ll be set. I even got the Winmodem and the printer working without too much hassle.
Cost? $0 for hardware, $0 for most of the software (the 56k drivers for the modem are $20), and time (I’m not allowed to charge the family ;-P )
I miss linux!
Right now I’m using a laptop that runs the professional version of XP, acquired from Dell (who shipped it with the Vista disks, pointing out that Micro$oft’s XP support is due to be eliminated. I’m a slave to various pieces of specialty software that don’t run, or don’t run well, under a Windows simulator.
For several years I ran happily using first SuSE and then Ubuntu with a KDE desktop, OpenOffice, Kmail, and a Mozilla browser. I’m not a command-line geek, and I never had much trouble maintaining my system. Plus, with a few choice mailing lists, there was never a shortage of helpful people to get me over the few humps I did encounter.
Ah, well…
I think the switch from Windows to the KDE desktop is a painless transition. My biggest problem was having to learn not to double-click (though the mouse can be set up to behave just like a windows mouse, double-clicking included).
Oh yeah. At work, it’s Windows, with no practical means of escape.
But I’m going to build Diane’s new computer dual-boot, in hopes her curiosity will get the best of her. It has worked before.
David – I linked to your page about transitioning to Linux. It’s “information-rich”.
Les – that’ll be a good platform. That’s the nice thing about PC over Mac; (puts on helmet before finishing this sentence) you can roll your own.
I wish I had the skill set to build computers, and get the OS and programs organized, up, and running.
Sigh.