Off to Florida for a week to help Mom with her new computer.
Back in June she gave me a chunk of money for my birthday, which I promptly spent buying her a new Mac Mini. She is currently using an x86 machine (PII 450) that she purchased back in 1999. It runs WindowsXP, no SP2, no updates since XP was installed. And knowing the guy that installed it, it might not even be a legit copy of XP.
Since Windows is too big a security risk for the average user to handle, a Mac running OSX is the way for her to go. She was here for my birthday, and we spent some time setting it up, playing with iPhoto, messing with Mail.app, exploring her .Mac membership benefits, and otherwise learning OSX. The Mini was ready to plug-in and go when she got home.
But she resists change. And so, I fly to Florida to spend another week of Mac boot camp. And deprogramming the “millions of people run Windows with no problems” platitude. My response? “Millions of people smoke cigarettes and live to a ripe old age. Why are you so glad I quit?”
She seems excited, though, which is good news. And I think when she realizes how little she was doing with Windows, and how there are far more resources on the Internet than e-mail from her children, she’ll be even more excited. One can hope …
Oh, and anyone want to buy a PII 450 desktop with CentOS pre-installed? It’s only been driven lightly by a little old lady. E-mail me if you’re interested.