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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: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:12PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Tuesday November 03 2015, @04:12PM (#257988) Homepage Journal

    I'm actually very on board with the other comments about running Apple/Microsoft if it will be easier.

    I do want to mention to everyone about Peppermint Linux. It fits into a similar nitch as the Chromebooks (lightweight design to access cloud apps), but is a full Linux install so you can install what you will, and administer just like a Debian descendant.

    http://peppermintos.com/ [peppermintos.com]

    I actually use it on my Linux machine thanks to how well they implement LXDE - I do not miss anything from the major players and it follows the familiar Start menu layout out of the box.

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