Welcome to MSDN Blogs Sign in | Join | Help

Having a second or third or fourth computer...

I know almost everyone out there who will read this blog has more than 1 computer at their disposal already, so what I really want to know is if you were to give an additional computer to your brother, sister, mom, dad, great aunt Sally, or whomever who only has a single PC today, what would you want them to experience?  That is to say, if you were to give them the computer what would you want them to get out of having this second computer that they don't get out of having the original computer that they already have.   And if you were to do this, I want to know more than "it's a better computer" than the old one (in that you want to replace the old one with the new one) rather what benefit if any would there be to having these multiple computers for this particular person.  Place yourself in their shoes, not your own, of course you want one machine to develop on, one machine to play on, one machine to experiment on, one machine to ...., but does your great aunt Sally? 

Published Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:12 AM by EvanF
Filed under:

Comments

# re: Having a second or third or fourth computer...

Evan: Great question! My choice for my Dad would be a Tablet PC. He's a very active digital photographer and a Tablet is a perfect photo album/download box solution for him when he's in the field shooting, attending his Photoshop classes, etc. It's a combination of the rotating display, light weight, and great battery life that has me thinking this is the unit for him.
Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:13 AM by Marc Orchant

# re: Having a second or third or fourth computer...


One to experiment (install anything, download spyware, soon to be virus ridden PC).
One non-experiemental machine with high security settings. This machine only runs the things aunt Sally can't live without (e-mail).

Most of my relatives, particularly my grandparents, are very afraid to experiment with PCs because they're worried they are going to "hurt" the computer. They face constant indecision. Should I click OK, or not? Or the classic example is installation programs that give them a multiple choice question, but they don't understand any of the options. My advise is always "click away!" Don't sit there pondering something you don't know the answer to. Just pick one. If it was the wrong option, so what, you can re-install. And once you get that critical threshold of viruses, just break out the Windows CD and re-install the whole OS. You have to be prepared to do this if you are going to experiment. But the upside is stress free computing. Don't worry about. The computer will live.

And that's what I preach to my relatives though none of them have 2nd PCs to do this type of experimentation with. They so want to keep their e-mail working that they become super-cautious about anything they do with their PC. This really limits what they can do of course. Once PCs get cheap enough, I imagine we'll all have a 2nd one. And maybe clean installs will get easier, though by then I bet we'll have viruses that survive a clean install of the OS.



Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:30 AM by Gabe Halsmer

# re: Having a second or third or fourth computer...

The only benefit to the non-techies in my life for a second PC would be mobility of either having a laptop to take around and more powerful workhorse available or having a second location such as in the kitchen or garage for surfing to recipes and instructions. The other benefit would be if they have multiple users sharing the computers so more than onecould be on at a time (kids can be playing games while mom is paying bills).
Thursday, November 11, 2004 10:58 AM by Don Newman

# re: Having a second or third or fourth computer...

I just did this recently with my sister. I made sure that what she got was a computer that gave her a better and safer Internet experience (firewall, a/v subscription, popup blocker, automated spyware scanning and cleanup).

Second, I made sure that she would have a good multimedia experience (Picasa and Flickr, latest WMP, Musicmatch, DivX, fixed file associations, etc.).

Third, (and this was huge) I bought her a Webcam, configured all the audio, mic, and video drivers, and configured her IM. Now, we Webcam-chat all the time with the kids, etc.
Thursday, November 11, 2004 12:04 PM by Larry O'Brien

# Evan s Weblog of Tech and Life Having a second or third or fourth | Indoor Grills

Anonymous comments are disabled
 
Page view tracker