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Ask Soylent: What Computer to Get Grandma

posted by janrinok on Tuesday November 03 2015, @11:12AM   Printer-friendly
from the over-to-you dept.

Walzmyn writes:

So it's happened; mom's venerable Dell has bit the dust and I'm being called on to find her a new laptop. Everything I've seen here and elsewhere says Windows 10 is a privacy nightmare and we're trusting Microsoft's forced automatic updates to not break the computer. Dell is still offering computers with Win 7 and 8.1, but Microsoft is pushing the OS upgrade hard and heavy. I'd love for her to let me set her up with Linux but she's devoted to Google Picasa (Google not porting their apps is another rant) and I'm not sure how often she's going to be calling me with some Windows only program she needs. And then there's Apple, which makes my fingers itch to type, but it's looking better and better. So, what is the collective wisdom of the Soylentils*?

  1. Is windows 10 really not that bad and just roll with it.
  2. Is Linux finally ready for Grandma?
  3. Stick with 8.1 and turn off all the updates?
  4. Shell out the cash for a Macbook?

*Irony duly noted.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @11:47AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 03 2015, @11:47AM (#257885)

    Seriously, try Linux lite in a VM and see if the Win32 packages on the "must have" list run. The last time I refurbished an old machine with a dead HDD I was very impressed by how far WINE had come. So far no complaints from the user who is running more than a couple of windows programs that he couldn't live without.

  • (Score: 2) by soylentsandor on Tuesday November 03 2015, @12:42PM

    by soylentsandor (309) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @12:42PM (#257894)

    Seriously, try Linux lite in a VM and see if the Win32 packages on the "must have" list run. The last time I refurbished an old machine with a dead HDD I was very impressed by how far WINE had come.

    I'm not sure about Linux [linuxliteos.com] Lite [wikipedia.org], but otherwise I'm with AC here.

    Picasa 3.9 appears to work fine [codeweavers.com] under Crossover. So you have the choice on whether to go the easy way (Crossover) or try to get Wine to run Picasa yourself.