[TriLUG] Deploying Linux to...Aunt Marge

[Greg Brown]

I'll tell you what I did for my non-technical parents and sister - migrated
them to OS X and let them be.  Both my sister and my parents have been
burned by out-of-date or non-existent anti-virus, lost data, etc, etc, etc,
standard stuff really when using Microsoft operating systems in conjunction
with high-speed Internet.

I gave my parents my old G3 iBook when I got a G4 iBook for my wife.  Why
give my parents a computer?  Simple - I got tired of spending my time on the
phone trying to diagnose "computer slowness" or any other one of a million
technical problems that exists on Windows on a machine in Arizona.  So,
while I could have got $X for selling the laptop on eBay I calculated that I
was at least 99.89% probable to spend $X + $1 in my time if they remained on
Windows doing tech support.  So giving them the computer was worth it.  And
being free, they couldn't really turn it down.

Yes, there were some technical hurdles to overcome with switching but the
number of tech calls has decreased dramatically.  My sister got an older
iMac (the ones that look like eMacs) so she could do iChat with my parents
and now she is talking about upgrading to a new iMac.

As they sang in South Park so many years go.. Happy happy happy, everyone is
happy.  And happy relatives on a better platform makes for a happier IT guy
at home.

I think there will be a time when Ubuntu gets to the point that I could have
set up my non-techie parents and sister on that platform, but it's just not
there yet.  Close, and getting closer, but not yet.  If they lived closer to
me instead of 1000 and 2000 miles away perhaps I could have set them up and
got them running with the occasional house call but that wasn't an option.

Greg