Comments on: A “rational response”?

By: illovich

illovich — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 15:06:16 +0000

Give Grandmom a linux distribution? Are you insane or just cruel?!? Be kind to your grandmother–get her the Mac Mini or iMac that she deserves, and set her up with AOL.

My grandmother loves being able to be emailed pictures. She doesn’t send much email though, because she can’t type. What’s funny is when my mom got her the computer, I think we almost all thought she would be able to type, without considering that there was no reason for her to ever learn how.

I know the linux folks love their linux, but I think for regular folks that need to be saved from using windows–the mac is still the best alternative.

(Ironically, I stumbled on this story shortly after telling my wife that my PC is dead–I think there’s some weird spyware on it that causes explorer to crash on startup)

Ok, enough rambling.

By: john

john — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 14:46:51 +0000

People continue to put up with this crap because they don’t know they can do better.
They’ve made themselves believe that they could never learn new technology, and so they do nothing.
Action, and altruistic techs passing along truths about ease of use (with Linux or Macs) would be my suggestion. Also, educating people on the benefit of giving their PC away is probably a very good thing too…

By: Michelle Murrain

Michelle Murrain — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:59:07 +0000

OK, yeah, I’m a nerd. And yes, a 5 CD Fedora core set would not be so helpful for either grandma, or a nonprofit organization w/o technology expertise. But a Mac works, as does some distributions such as Lindows, and others.

I’m not saying that Linux is the be all and end all. I’m just saying that it is very hard to beleive that people are willing to put up with this crap from MS, continually.

It will take some time for Linux to be ready for prime time, but the Mac OS is on it’s way to the intel platform pretty soon, and Mac Mini’s are cheap - so that alternative, which is much, much less vulnerable to spyware and viruses, both because of lack of market share, and, truly, by design, is a reasonable alternative.

By: Productivity Hacks

Productivity Hacks — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:51:07 +0000

The scoop on spyware… How much does it cost you?

Do your employees get spyware? I know that at least one employee per client that we have is infected each month. The average time it takes a trained support technician to remove spyware is 4 hours or around $200 in…

By: JW

JW — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:38:24 +0000

Wow, an unhelpful response from some nerd! Yes, let’s give grandma a 5 CD Fedora Core set.

By: 1joe1

1joe1 — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:18:57 +0000

Am i the only one that wants to go dumbster diving?

By: MAKE: Blog

MAKE: Blog — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:08:31 +0000

Corrupted PC’s Find New Home in the Dumpster

This is insane, these folks needs to grab MAKE. On a recent Sunday morning when Lew Tucker’s Dell deskt…