<p>My brother is mid-50s, has never been on the internet, doesn’t own a computer. For various reasons I would like to get him a computer and pay for his internet access. But I live 1500 miles away and I know he will not be able to set it up and will not be able to use it unless he essentially has someone holding his hand on an ongoing basis. I would like him to be able to email, access Youtube, choose movies on Netflix. I know no one else in the town he lives in. I looked at his local public library online but they don’t seem to be offering basic internet classes (and I’m not sure he’d go to one.) In a perfect world I guess I’d like to hire someone to take a computer to his house, arrange for broadband (and bill it to me) show him how to use it and return once a week or so to help him with it and make sure he is getting frustrated or intimidated by the tecnology. I’d do it, but I don’t live there. Any ideas?</p>
<p>In most towns there seem to be computer classes at the senior citizens center. Perhaps you could contact the senior center in his town and find out who teaches their class and then try to hire that person to give him private computer lessons…</p>
<p>He doesn’t need a home computer to do what you think he’d be interested in. </p>
<p>An iPhone would allow him to do most of it and is a lot easier than using a full fledged computer. You can get keyboard attachments that go with them.</p>
<p>Or if you don’t want him to pay $70 for cell service, you can get an iPod Touch or iPad that works off of wireless.</p>
<p>From what I’ve seen, iPhone and iPods look pretty easy to use and don’t require a lot of setup.</p>
<p>Its so easy to do, the computer tells you what it needs and theres help topics and stuff. I would say first get the computer before you get the guy to come out from the cable company. What they do is when they set it up they make sure you are conected to the internet, so they set it up for you and type in codes and load a disk on for you. When they set up mine they had two guys come out and they put up the wire from the street and hooked up the wireless system and made sure it worked before they left. I just go my new computer for a present and i know how they set it up. I dont even watch tv anymore. Theres all kinds of movies and stuff on the internet and on utube.</p>
<p>Got our grandparents an ipad which sits in a decent size keyboard. Nice size screen. Hit an icon and mail comes up. Hit another icon, and their favorite sites are called up. Not much to learn and no need to buy internet service or some guys coming out this way (we purchased 3G for them).</p>
<p>I believe you can have all those functions on your television, like they do in hotels.</p>
<p>Can you do an iPad with 3G without having a separate computer? We are talking to MIL about getting her set up with a computer this winter and iPad would be great, but ours (which only has WiFi) requires a computer to set it up.</p>
<p>Well I wasn’t thinking iPad I guess because I figure it’s way out of my league in terms of price and sophistication of technology so it must be out of his. Since I would be the one paying for internet access I was thinking one step up from dial-up. I had assumed that iPad/data plans would be prohibitively expensive. I was thinking like a $300 refurbished desktop and maybe $29/mo basic internet. And when I say he has never been on the internet, I mean he has never been on the internet. He has no experience with computers in any way, shape or form. Talk about left behind… He wouldn’t know what to plug into what, let alone how to make anything happen. I like the idea of the senior center tutor, I’ll look into that tomorrow.</p>
<p>If the senior center doesn’t have a tutor…another place to look is a local college or high school and call the computer department and ask if they have any students whom they can recommend who you could hire to give some private basic lessons on how to use a computer to an older person. Since it is such basic stuff, there should be a high school or college kid who could do this. By going through the school, you are getting a reference of sorts rather than putting up a random classified. You may even be able to get help for free from a responsible high school student as a community service project.</p>
<p>Its not difficult to teach some one older to learn computer and get it set up by techies. The motivation of the user is the problem. If your brother is not motivated to use computer, he will call you for any little thing about it and you will spend a lot of phone time day in and day out.</p>
<p>My mom had the same problem, when she was in the 60’s she had little knowlege to use the computer. My brother who was a CS Phd candidate in CMU set up the computer for her to use. Between me and my brother, we get to spend about 6 hours each to diagnose the problem whether its a hardware or software problem. We were living thousands miles away from Californina where mom was at.</p>
<p>Sooze is right about high school or college kids too I just thought the senior center person might be more patient. I’ve found sometimes youngish ones go too quick for old timers.?</p>
<p>The local public library probably has computers he can play with a bit too.</p>
<p>‘The motivation of the user is the problem. If your brother is not motivated to use computer, he will call you for any little thing about it and you will spend a lot of phone time day in and day out.’</p>
<p>I agree with the first sentence.
The second sentence should read: If your brother is not motivated to use a computer, you will have wasted your money.</p>
<p>Maybe what is needed is a visit with your brother to the library. Have him explore key features on your laptop and determine HIS interest.</p>
<p>Well, he is motivated. He calls me up to ask if this artist or that artist has any new music out. He thinks I’m a genius because I can make mixes of songs he’d like. Hello, he could do that himself if he were online. He has no idea what Youtube is but would love it. And I don’t want to be on the phone saying, “well what screen are you looking at? Try putting your cursor on the drop down… the cursor, you know that arrow that moves around the screen when you move the mouse… yeah, so what’s in the dropdown… the dropdown, the menu of choices that appear when you move cursor over the word at the top of the screen, yeah, tell me what you see now.” I’m going to call the library and the senior center and see what they suggest.</p>
<p>Give the iPad another look. It will only cost, I believe, around as low as $14.99 a month. And the layout will be more intuitive to use at first glance than a desktop computer. No start menu, no C:\ drive, no shut down/sleep/hibernate, etc etc. Just touch Safari (the browser), and he’s set to go browse.</p>
<p>You can lead a horse to water…but you can’t make him use a computer. Or as my 80 year old dad does, you can lead a horse to a computer, and then he steps on it!</p>
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<p>^^ That as well. But in today’s market, the hardware cost is negligent compare to when computers first came out. I can still remember IBM PC costs $4,000 each!</p>
<p>I still think the time to make an older folk to become computer savy is substaintial and unless he is highly motivated, lots of time will be wasted for nothing. My mom ended up gave up the computer because her motivation was to record some transactions for a charity as a treasurer. Once she retired from it, the computer became a paper weight and it is still sitting on the table taking up spaces.</p>
<p>I would second ipad as the learning curve is much shorter.</p>
<p>my bad, negligible NOT negligent… :(</p>
<p>Hey, he’s not “older folk.” He’s younger than I am.</p>
<p>Wellspring - just because he calls you does not mean he is motivated.</p>
<p>if he were motivated he would get down to best buy and have them help him figure it out. Honestly, if you can read directions and build an Ikea book shelf you can set up a computer.</p>
<p>If I were you I would get him a $300 netbook. All you do is take it out of the box and turn it on.</p>