Oh god, don't get me started. Had to help my 80 year old dad get his new windows 11 laptop setup recently. All he wants in his golden years is to click an icon and play solitaire from time to time.
Now it's all in one Microsoft store app with a collection of classic games, fine. But when you click minesweeper it doesn't start minesweeper, it opens the microsoft store, even after it's installed.
And he accidentally clicks a banner ad instead of the Spider freecell icon because they're identical and placed over each other. And instead of just changing the number of decks he has to answer questions about settings, coins to collect or something... it's insane.
My dad is a brilliant 73yo electrical engineer but he gets fooled by those fake ad “download now!” buttons when looking for, say, an old driver for old hardware. It makes me mad that people are making money taking advantage of people who don’t know better than to click the ad, esp when it installs adware.
My go-to recommendation for older folks is ChromeOS. Say what you want about their privacy and stuff, but my mom hasn't been able to download any malware, and it's very easy to use and do office stuff on.
I did this for my elderly dad, and told him to contact me if anything was amiss. He had some hardware issue with a cheap USB mouse and told my mom about it. My mom promptly took the whole thing to some box office store tech support place. They told her they couldn’t install the drivers for the new mouse she bought, and their proposed remedy was to charge her to wipe the laptop with Windows. She did so “as to not trouble me.”
Everyone with the potential to cause you trouble if they don't contact you soon enough, must be told repeatedly to contact you as soon as possible. I emphasize this repeatedly with clients and family. It's enlightened self-interest, and I emphasize that it will be faster for me and much faster for them to involve me sooner.
Valid point, in a logical world. But some 80 year olds are just so hard headed that instead of calling one of their THREE children who work in IT they just head into the closest electronics store and buy the laptop recommended by their favorite sales rep. And then they call us to complain about it.
He would scoff at my suggestion to install anything other than what he's known for 30+ years.
> He would scoff at my suggestion to install anything other than what he's known for 30+ years.
Very fair. I've started earlier, but I've been trying to remind my parents that if they want to have a good relationship with their, non-existent as of yet, grandkids - they need to have a good relationship with new tech. That's what the grandkids are going to want from them.
Now it's all in one Microsoft store app with a collection of classic games, fine. But when you click minesweeper it doesn't start minesweeper, it opens the microsoft store, even after it's installed.
And he accidentally clicks a banner ad instead of the Spider freecell icon because they're identical and placed over each other. And instead of just changing the number of decks he has to answer questions about settings, coins to collect or something... it's insane.