Basic PC for my Dad

[jimbo]

My Father is fed up waiting for his PC to do stuff.
He's anything but a power user. I suspect all his does it:
write letters
send emails
book holidays on the web.

Where's the best place to buy a cheap 'bog-standard' PC from?

?

 

[Fanum]

I would suspect that pretty much any £250-300 laptop from any PC shop would do the job....the problem may be the OS....There's a bit of a learning curve to switch from XP to Vista for example, and within Vista, there are some functions that you access in very different ways to how you do it in XP.

If he's used to XP, see if you can stick with it, even if it means binning Vista and installing the copy that he has on his existing machine.

That said, you may find a £30 stick of RAM and a fresh install of the OS will speed up his existing machine to a perfectly adequate level for basic use.

The other option is to go for a MAC product, designed for simpletons who can't master the art of using a two buttoned mouse and who don't want or need to be able to tweak things to how they want them to work

You will of course pay a premium to get a Mac, and he will have to wear designer glasses and read the Guardian from there on

 

[AberdeenAngus]

If he just uses it for the things you say then perhaps a netbook might be better thn a full blown PC.

 

[cookie]

designer glasses? most of my bins come from the market.



two pairs have red frames though

reinstall xp on yer dads heap of shite and it will see him ok for another couple of years if he quits the one handed surfing sites.

 

[Fanum]

designer glasses? most of my bins come from the market.



two pairs have red frames though

Quad Erat Demonstratum

 

[Pukmeister]

I have been using the Beta version of Windows 7 Ultimate and I think it is a major step forward over XP/Vista (it times out in June 2010). I'm actually impressed for once with a Microsoft product after 20 years of using their software.

A much nicer interface between machine and user, a lot quicker especially on the web, and very easy to live with. For example, I turned on my Epson all-in-one machine and the PC downloaded all drivers itself for printing and scanning etc automatically and seamlessly without prompting. Very nice.

Some places (eg Novatech.co.uk) are doing the full retail version of Windows 7 Home for £69 as a pre-release deal. I've got mine on order, release date 22nd October.

Perhaps a minor revamp of your dads PC with some ram and a fresh install of Windows 7 would make his online experience more pleasant and breathe new life into his old setup ?

(I think the Beta test software is no longer available online for download due to the impending release)