CrunchGear

This morning my mother called me at work screaming, “Umm, there’s a green light flashing from a white box on top of the computer desk. I won’t leave for work until you call me back to teach me how to turn it off.”

I must have told her that this was the wireless router about 100x, but of course no one listens. Everytime she sees me at the computer, she asks if I can teach her to send an email…which is getting old. I really like the idea of the gmail account…she’d like being able to look back at previous conversations and so forth. Great tips!

Another excellent Help Key. I reckon I’ll be passing my iMac down to my parents once I upgrade to that Mac Pro I’ve been dreaming of recently; it’ll make their life, and mine, a hell of a lot simpler.
I’ll be setting them up a gmail pop account in thunderbird too, so they won’t have to worry about being able to contact me.

You can also install LogMeIn client http://www.logmein.com
the free service lets you opareat on the remote computer from anywhere in the world .
This helped me a lot.

I set my dad up with a Gmail account…he asked me to remove it and “put [him] back on Thunderbird.” (I had previously set him up using his @sbcyahoo account on Thunderbird, but when he moved and got Comcast, I moved him to Gmail.) His issue? He didn’t like the fact that it sometimes asked him to log in again. He could never remember his password. (For whatever reason, the “remember me on this computer” checkbox didn’t always save his info…)

So, I simply enabled POP in Gmail and configured Thunderbird to work with his Gmail account…

Good article, but maybe lacking in a couple of areas. Some of us can’t afford to splash out on new mac mini’s when there’s already quite a bit of time and money invested in wintel technology. Secondly, would’ve loved a paragraph or two about using firefox, thunderbird, etc with slightly tweaked settings (for example, I always “dumb down” apps and Windows for my parents).

My father is from 1915 and last year he bought his first computer ever: an iBook. I enabled port forwarding on his wireless DSL-router, enabled the standard VNC server in OS-X and voila: from anywhere I can takeover his screen. He calls me about once a week, usually he forgets where he stored his last document as he does not quite understand the concept of directories or folders. No problem, I fire up Chicken of the VNC, take over his screen, and Spotlight will help me. Oh my father is always amazed and happy…

I have to say, i think the presto printer thing is amazing, but as for shifting my ‘rents over to linux, or my aunts/uncles for that matter, is just too darn hard. And what i mean by that is…

They cling to the knowledge of how to use the MS Equasion editor, or getting photo cds from others, or buying the odd pc mag because it has some wonderful Family Tree software.

My dad is the best example, a handfull of apps ruin the possibility of him moving to linux: MS Flight Sim 2004 (and no, flightgear isnt as good for him), some silly family tree app, webcam support in skype, and MS Train Sim.

Anyway, all that aside, great article!

One other thing you forgot to mention - Pass this parental responsibility to your little brother, who will always have more time on his hands. :P

Your Dad uses ‘Sype’? Got a download link to this uberified, letter-short ‘Skype’?

Yes, I also use logmein for my parents’ computer. My problem is much worse than this though, as my mom tends to randomly change settings on the computer until the only thing she sees is the BSOD. 3 computers, and several installs of Windows later, Im thinking the Linux alternative might be the way to go.

Some great ideas - I like the idea of a gmail account for my parents. I get an average of one phone call a month from my father (who thinks he is FAR more computer literate than he really is) because “the computer lost XP” or “the computer deleted the internet”, and it always seems to be my mother’s fault.

I read the title on your article and was immediately steamed. I’m hope you didn’t really mean it but that title smacks of ageism. I find it demeaning to call parents “idiots.” Now I realize you don’t really think they are idiots but after reading that it was difficult to have any good feelings about the rest of your article even though I agreed with most of it. And then you recommend a Presto??? Please read my blog post here to see this product from a boomer’s perspective:
http://www.thesavvyboomer.com/the_savvy_boomer/2006/11/presto_marketin.html I find it hard to believe your salivitating mother doesn’t have the smarts to click on a jpeg attachment. If you’re young enough to still have have a living grandmother then your mother is young enough to learn about computers.
I don’t want to seem like a grumpy old man but please, I’m tired of seeing posts with titles like this that make out anyone over 50 incapable of doing anything more than getting sucked up in phishing scams and overloading our computer with spyware. It’s very cool to be able to support them by phone and by remote access, but it’s alot cooler to go and help them in person. Believe it or not, people from your parent’s generation were the ones who actually invented the PC so perhaps they are a little more capable than you give them credit for.

I have to agree with the last comment. I am 63 years old, own 2 desktops (both built by me from parts purchased online and in stores) and a used laptop. I have two sons, one who is a vp of a software company and treats me as a knowledgeable person of computers. Our biggest argument is that he loves Microsoft and I use Linux. My other son is a store manager for a large national company. He comes to me for computer help as does his wife. I decided last year that I was sick of windows and moved to Linux. Why does everyone think that we can not learn anything about computers. Who do you think invented them and got them to this point. The hackers and inventors of yesteryear are the senior citizens of today.

john

Just please, S H U T T H E F U C K U P.

the gmail tip is one of the best, i did this last summer for my mother and grandmother, setup pop3 on both and they barely noticed any diffrence and if anything happens (and it did) all the emails are already backed up.

ive been trying to switch my mother to linux for years but she knows alittle to much and wont let me, i could switch my grandmother over and i doubt she would even notice and thats going to happen this summer.

Wait until you get a phone call from your mother living 1800 miles away saying “I used my bonus this year and bought myself a Hitachi laptop.” About a half an hour into this phone conversation you finally get the model number of her brand new Toshiba Laptop to see what the next 5 years of your support nightmares will involve…

How does she get email from Mail.app onto her new laptop? How does she run her genealogy program on the PC? How does she use the printer on both her mac and the PC? What about the scanner? How does she… How about… What if…

Paying for satellite internet installation, a wireless router, and a wireless print server later. I finally get her all set up. That has been the most expensive laptop I never bought!

I like the logmein idea. I had thought about doing VNC, but it would have been too slow on her old Dialup. Luckily, I haven’t gotten a phone call to fix the laptop since I got her the satellite internet service. Funny her internet bill went down too without the 2nd phone line and such.

Yup, Linux works great for computerphobic parents. My mom used to get in trouble with a Win32 box. I installed Ubuntu Linux on it and now phone support is much easier. It doesn’t involve guessing what the virus du jour did to the PC anymore. Plus, having her type admin commands on the command line works better than trying to describe which portion of a GUI she should click.

Truthfully, the type of behavior described here isn’t restricted to people of a certain age. However, if you have any computer experience, parents have no problem turning to you as a free IT support desk. As children, we want to help, but as adults, we think there is probably a better way (gmail accounts, remote access, alternative operating systems). We also tend to complain a little, feeling at times burdened by the responsibility. Yes, there are many more people out there who are also are in need of support, but they did not give birth to me or my husband, or raise us either, so I don’t feel obligated to be a free public IT help desk.

not really what I was expecting.

As a father and soon-to-be grandfather I get calls from my kids (not to mention clients) asking me to fix their computers. I run Linux and Windows on machines I built. I even have a Mac laptop. Two Mac’s actually, counting the Powerbook 520c I keep as a curiosity. I started playing with computers when the interface was punch cards. My first home system cost me $8000, had a touch screen and a whopping big 15 MB Winchester hard drive. You want fun? Try keeping a system up and running offshore on a semisubmersible rig drilling in the Gulf of Mexico while the rig crew sandblasts the deck outside your unit. Lol…not all of us geezers are helpless noobs.

Logmein rocks, especially every time my younger sister does something stupid and I get that “help meeee!” phone call. I work in tech support and I’ve owned a PC of one kind or another since I was 17 (now 44.) So yeah, I’m pretty good at fixing the damn things. Sis can barely handle AOL, never mind anything else on a PC. :-p

As for Windows, the ~only~ reason I haven’t ditched it completely is Family Tree Maker, the top genealogy program. Give me something comparable with the same features that runs under Ubuntu and I’ll happily chuck WinXP in its entirety.

Instead of the “Presto” option (because I hate to pay on-going fees), network a printer and setup port forwarding on the router to forward the LPR ports to the printer. Many support 9100.

A couple suggestions of my own that has helped me support my mom’s XP machines.

UltraVNC is a great remote option. Connect up and do desktop sharing/file transfer, whatever. Free.

Combine this with DynDNS. I setup all the remote machines to have a DynDNS IP, so I can always find the remote machine no matter what the ISP does or how often it changes, or even if the laptop is on the road. Free.

Thunderbird / Firefox are a must as well.

Windows Defender seems to do a really good job with Spyware.

heh, it make me think to, once i got in my grandma’s kitchen, a DVD was playing probally at 16x on backward. I asked her what she was doing and she told me she was rewinding the DVD before putting it back in it’s case :/

Check out http://www.WindowsVistaUserGuide.com if you need any help or can’t be bothered to explain the fine detailing of Vista!

Individual oldsters who remain sharp and have an interest in computers will always whimper about being lumped in with the vast majority whose faculties and drive have dulled and deflated. Ignore them. They are anecdotes. The rest of us know the statistics of which you speak.

About the “generation” argument….

I see that some of you are angry that the boomer babies are being labelled as computer illiterate. Now, I obviously realize that this is not true. There are many parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and so on that are computer geniuses and could teach all of us a thing of two about computers. And I say All the power to you! It’s enjoyable to see people of all ages learning more about technology.

This article could really be used for anyone who’s not so tech-savvy. So why is it geared towards parents? Let’s think about it…the majority of younger people tend to know at least something about computers (mostly because we had computer classes in school and we grew up with computers). So our friends know about computers so the only other people in close association with us are our parents. And what kid doesn’t like to complain about their parents?

It is true that the boomer generation created the computer (and we thank you for it). But that means that they didn’t grow up with it like we did. Does that mean that they are incapable of learning new technology. Of course not. I can say from my own parents that they are not the most willing people to learn. My mom has a BSc in Computer Science from back in the 1970s. She can code some mean FORTRAN but setting up a router is beyond her. This is because she hasn’t learned and it’s just easier to ask me to do it. My dad is worse. I’ve tried time and time again to show him how to write and send email but he doesn’t want to learn. He insists that I should just write it for him.

Really, being computer-savvy has nothing to do with age and everything to do with a willingness to learn, especially if you have no reason to learn other than curiosity. Unfortunately, most of the people who (for whatever reason) never really learn to use a computer are baby boomers or older.

Just…buy a mac.

I am of the baby boomer generation. Most of us have at least some computer skills. It’s the generation of our 70-90 year old parents, who didn’t learn to use computers in a job or school, that you are referring to. Yes, there are some very computer savvy 80 year olds. But I can relate to the article and have been thinking about buying my mother a Mac each time i get a frantic phone call from 2000 miles away. The logmein sounds like a good idea.
PS MY daughter sent me this article because she too has helped my mother a lot.

I started a user guide for my parents and since then they have been very good. Although number one thing I reckonmend is having remote access. Sometimes it’s alot easier to fix it yourself!

Thanks for the tips! Last week my parents changed ISPs and couldn’t figure out how to change their account info. They were trying to delete Outlook Express! Fortunately, you can’t do that through the control panel.

I work in the field of gerontology and am very aware of ageism. In fact, I was the researcher on a project that taught frail seniors in nursing homes how to use the computer — average age was 86 and I had 5 people in their 90s (one 98 year old!). This was the most heart-warming research I ever did. So many of them felt they were no longer “stupid” and that the world had passed them by. However, none of them were able to use the computer totally autonomously. We had to always have volunteers on site.

Also, not all of our parents are baby boomers. Mine are in their 80s. They are really smart people and love their computer, but honestly, they do need a lot of support. I think that the headline of this article reflects the affectionate exasperation we sometimes feel with family members, expressed with a bit of humor. We don’t really mean to say they are idiots, any more than when we buy a “dummies” book, we mean to call ourselves dummies.

Thanks for the tips! Last week my parents changed ISPs and couldn’t figure out how to change their account info. They were trying to delete Outlook Express! Fortunately, you can’t do that through the control panel.

I work in the field of gerontology and am very aware of ageism. In fact, I was the researcher on a project that taught frail seniors in nursing homes how to use the computer — average age was 86 and I had 5 people in their 90s (one 98 year old!). This was the most heart-warming research I ever did. So many of them felt they were no longer “stupid” and that the world had passed them by. However, none of them were able to use the computer totally autonomously. We had to always have volunteers on site.

Also, not all of our parents are baby boomers. Mine are in their 80s. They are really smart people and love their computer, but honestly, they do need a lot of support. I think that the headline of this article reflects the affectionate exasperation we sometimes feel with family members, expressed with a bit of humor. We don’t really mean to say they are idiots, any more than when we buy a “dummies” book, we mean to call ourselves dummies.

Brian: Your blog post completely missed the point of Presto’s marketing angle. They are encouraging boomers to buy the thing for THEIR parents, who may not want to have a full computer with internet access. Nowhere does it imply that BOOMERS are incapable of operating technology - it implies their PARENTS are. And judging from my parents and grandparents (I’m early 30s), that marketing is right on.

I have taken a lot of tech support calls from my family and have to agree with the John on most of his suggestions - especially on setting up people with gmail. I am a big fan of Unix and have been using it for over 20 years but wonder if this is the right thing for a technophobe.

One tool that I have recently discovered that has been very effective with helping my family on tech support issues, is a free Remote Control tool. It has been a hit with my family mainly because it is easy to use. http://www.zolved.com/remote_control

The other effective strategy that I have found is to use a new web service for a while before introducing it to my family/network. That way I am sure that the service is easy to use and doesn’t have landmines that will trigger support calls for me later on.

Dudes- Im a computer teacher on a tiny greek island. I was setting up a gmail acct for one of my customers and he says “Oh no its ok i already have an account..” so I got him to sit at his machine and go to his gmail. He went to google and typed “yahoo.com” into the search bar… Another classic is when people email me asking why they cant email…

I also use LogMeIn to remotely manage my parents’ Windows system.

One other problem I’ve had to overcome is that they kept moving the icons all over the desktop. I found a program called IconLock written in 1999 by PC Magazine. The article is still available at http://www.pcmag.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=8254,00.asp. You can download it at http://roverbot.tripod.com/iconlock.htm.

While the article says “IconLock runs under Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT 4,” I’ve found that it runs fine under Windows XP. Do be sure that you exercise all the desktop and Start menu items that they’ll need to use as you can’t completely lock it down or they won’t be able to launch items on the desktop or even from the Start menu.

One other tip. I setup a Blogger blog that I set as the homepage on their Internet Explorer. With that I can add links to their homepage from anywhere and all they have to do is close and reopen Internet Explorer and the new link will be right there in front of them!

Hi I have a few tips in my blog to help make computers easier for parents. It is geared toward seniors but i think these tips can be helpful for any age.

http://2jour-computertips.blogspot.com/index.html

The main problem which us youngins tend to forget is accessibility :). A lot of times our parents have a hard time with computers because it is hard for them to see and even hard to use the mouse. This is why I strongly recommend Opera as an alternative browser. They have amazing zoom capability. In addition, they have great keyboard support. This is great to have since beginners have a hard time getting used the mouse.

Dudes- Im a computer teacher on a tiny greek island. I was setting up a gmail acct for one of my customers and he says “Oh no its ok i already have an account..” so I got him to sit at his machine and go to his gmail. He went to google and typed “yahoo.com” into the search bar… Another classic is when people email me asking why they cant email…

I’m a public librarian and I see it all.

Although there are some elderly people who are more than competent at using a PC, most are not. One of the hardest concepts for anyone over 65 to grasp is using a mouse. It seems that there is some kind of “click” block where these folks don’t have the motor skills necessary to click, or double-click without dragging icons around randomly. These skills are foreign to them, and take practice. Between arthritis, and a lack of patience it isn’t easy for many of them to catch on.

Additionally, the Federal government is now requiring more and more online involvement from people for IRS, Medicare, etc… Many of these older folks have never used a computer, they never needed to, they don’t want to, and I don’t blame them. The Government is shoving technology down their gullets in the twilight of their lives. Last year, when the Medicare Prescription plan went into effect, we had SO many elderly people coming in in a panic because they needed to use a PC for the first time (couldn’t get through on the phone, and it was required) in their lives… It’s sad that the Government put them through this.