Least my son could do, after all those years of editing the ROM BIOS serial port interrupts so he could play Warcraft against his friends; editing config.sys files so he could play Final Fantasy VII or FPS Football Pro '95. He's now got a CS degree and is a web app developer -- and he's usually an OS version or two behind me.
For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
81–90 of 109 posts
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have a problem with unlimited liability to do work for my parents... Anyway, I installed Linux on my mother's system over Win XP years back and it couldn't have gone better. She has been doing great with Ubuntu for 2 years now. The spyware, failed updates and odd networking failures I was summoned to her house to fix frequently went away entirely, so thankfully it was the opposite of your warning. I guess the…
Similar situation here. My Dad uses his laptop for browsing and email, maybe to scan a document every few months. After getting fed up with all the calls about spyware and other generally weird issues I installed Ubuntu. Since then, I've had two support calls from him: 1) "Is it safe to enter my password when it's installing updates?" 2) "I'm at my friend's house... how do I add a new wireless network?"
Yup. I have installed Ubuntu on a number of computers for members of my congregation and provide them technical support. After one or two calls, it gets real quiet and they just enjoy using it.
My mother-in-law has Ubuntu on her laptop and brought it with her while they visit for Thanksgiving. I'll show her a few new things this weekend, but that's about the size of my technical support burden.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#83"Well, everything worked fine until you installed that [Chrome | Firefox | Opera] thing on my computer." Doing free tech support for non-technical people is a wonderful thought, but it can also provide a harsh lesson in the dangers of unlimited liability for open-ended, no-fee, no-contract work.
You're doing it wrong. The most important part of upgrading somebodys browser is to not tell them about it. Nobody cares about these things until you bring it to their attention.
Yeah... no... I tried that one too... and all I got was "What's this Firefox thing?" "Does it cost me money?"
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#84I remember the day I bought my mom and dad a PC. I only taught my mom how to check her email and a few weeks later, she's already installed a dozen Yahoo! and Popcap games in it.
A few more weeks later and as expected, the PC succumbed to a bunch of viruses and I had to "fix" them. To cut the story short, I installed FIrefox, hid the IE icon and told them to use it as it's "just the same, they only look different". I then left and never had to fix any virus problem whatsoever.
Now, they're doing great with Firefox(I think my dad even uses Chrome now).
Lesson learned: 1. Let them suffer from virus infections caused by old browsers cough IE6 2. "Cure" said virus and introduce antibody - new browsers 3. ??? 4. PROFIT!
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#85Least my son could do, after all those years of editing the ROM BIOS serial port interrupts so he could play Warcraft against his friends; editing config.sys files so he could play Final Fantasy VII or FPS Football Pro '95. He's now got a CS degree and is a web app developer -- and he's usually an OS version or two behind me.
It would be difficult to hide porn from a parent like you. LOL
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#86Also, delete all those toolbars.
It's astounding to me how often, when troubleshooting for someone, I find up to 1/4 of the viewing area in the browser consumed by a stack of toolbars. Once I deleted all of them and the person sent me an email the next day thanking me for "making her browser bigger."
They are usually automatically installed with one of those "opt out" options.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#87I hope nobody minds but I'd like to share what happened to me recently: My father called me a few months ago to ask if I could go on our bank's online banking site and tell him if I noticed anything unusual. At the time, HSBC's online banking had the following flow: Enter your user ID as the first step, enter your DOB as the second, and finally enter three specified digits from your 6-figure security PIN. It all seem…
> I installed Chrome, deleted the "Internet" icon from the desktop, imported old bookmarks and the like, and let him have a go on his new browser.
Is this a joke? Your dad's computer is rooted, so you remove an icon from the desktop and install a different browser?
Jesus Christ.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#88"Well, everything worked fine until you installed that [Chrome | Firefox | Opera] thing on my computer." Doing free tech support for non-technical people is a wonderful thought, but it can also provide a harsh lesson in the dangers of unlimited liability for open-ended, no-fee, no-contract work.
I don't have a problem with unlimited liability to do work for my parents... Anyway, I installed Linux on my mother's system over Win XP years back and it couldn't have gone better. She has been doing great with Ubuntu for 2 years now. The spyware, failed updates and odd networking failures I was summoned to her house to fix frequently went away entirely, so thankfully it was the opposite of your warning. I guess the…
[deleted]
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't have a problem with unlimited liability to do work for my parents... Anyway, I installed Linux on my mother's system over Win XP years back and it couldn't have gone better. She has been doing great with Ubuntu for 2 years now. The spyware, failed updates and odd networking failures I was summoned to her house to fix frequently went away entirely, so thankfully it was the opposite of your warning. I guess the…
Similar situation here. My Dad uses his laptop for browsing and email, maybe to scan a document every few months. After getting fed up with all the calls about spyware and other generally weird issues I installed Ubuntu. Since then, I've had two support calls from him: 1) "Is it safe to enter my password when it's installing updates?" 2) "I'm at my friend's house... how do I add a new wireless network?"
Whilst it seems like a good idea to install Ubuntu on other peoples computers there are 4 things that would stop me from doing it.
1) Flash player, this crashes allot under Linux and seems to have some weird issues with sound where you will be listening to a video and all of a sudden the sound will start playing from the beginning of the video in addition to the current sound.
2) Wifi , this generally works, but Network Manager doesn't seem to be the best piece of software and I've often had problems with it just not showing up wireless networks which should be there. No idea why.
3) Distro updates, you have to live in fear of the time when they will accidentally or intentionally click the "update to latest ubuntu" button when it asks and half the drivers stop working and/or it replaces their whole user interface with something else.
4) Other software , even if your sure they only need a browser because all they want to do is read the news and browse cookery sites there's going to be some point they decide to buy an ipod and ring you up asking how to install iTunes, sure you could go and spend some time coaching them how to do this under banshee or something but they might be concerned about why they have to do this differently. Of course they are also likely to buy the 1 scanner / webcam / printer etc that is known not to play well with Linux.
Re: For Thanksgiving, give your parents a treat: upgrade their browser
#90I tried doing that a couple of times and they end up looking for the blue "e". Somehow that's their symbol for "the internet". So what I did next was not uninstall but hide the icon and leave the chrome & FF visible. Now my dad uses Firefox and he calls it "the mozilla" hehe. And my mom somehow figured out a way to find IE, I guess she couldn't live without it. That was my case at least.
I think Lifehacker had a spin of the story in which the author linked the firefox APP to the IE ICON and said if you wanted to be really sneaky you could just rename Firefox to IE Explorer.
I always thought that Firefox should have had a giant "F" icon.
"Dad, I upgraded your 'E' software to the latest version: 'F'"
Google Chrome could be "G"...