Quick computer question (apple for the folks)

[liquid_sky]

quick question for you guys since I know you are reliable when it comes to Apple questions.

 

My parents have been wrestling with an old p-120 16 meg RAM win 95 machine for years now and they hardly turn it on because it is

a) a pile of shit

b) crashes too much

c) so slow my father claims that he could read the entire Dallas Morning News before the bootup screen goes away

 

Frankly, I am tired of having to fix it everytime they need help on it!

 

They know windows from work but I am seriously thinking of picking them up a cheap Apple with my tax money.

 

Am I better off getting them an iMac or the new Mini.. They dont have a ton of room and both would work nice.. that old pentium box is kafkaesque in both size and disgustingness.. so offwhite that its yellow. Mother is big on interior design and an iMac would look good in the living room (style over substance, you know how some people are) but I already have all of the parts to hook the mini up.

 

If I do get the mini, should I go ahead and load it full of RAM or wait until Tiger is out and see if Apple loads it on the mini and if it is better with memory usage? Have heard that the min. ram is a bit sluggish at times.

 

The computer is basically going to be for surfing the net, emailing me asking me computer questions (which will be far less with an Apple), listning to music (they never got on the cd bandwagon, jumped right from record to cassette.. I think they would go for iTunes though) and playing solitare. Had to buy a new mouse last time I worked on the computer because the left button had worn out from my mothers habitual FreeCell usage.

 

Thanks for the advice.

[joeybastard]

I know you're asking about Apple but you can get a pretty small XP box for $500. If they already are familiar with Windows, they might like that better. Older people aren't always thrilled with learning new technology. If it's not a surprise, I'd ask them what they feel would be better. XP has been solid as a rock for me and as far as virus/spyware stuff, AVG is free and works fine and MS' Antispyware avaliable for free is excellent. I occasionally run AdAware too but it almost never finds anything anymore since putting in the MS program.

 

Having said that, if you want an Apple, I vote for the iMac over the mini. The mini I tried at work was not remotely impressive to me other than it's size. It just felt underpowered to me, but to be fair, I think it was the base model and nothing had been upgraded.

[joeybastard]

The computer is basically going to be for surfing the net, emailing me asking me computer questions (which will be far less with an Apple),.

 

Sorry, forgot this in the last message.

 

There will be just as many questions in OSX. Maybe more if they are used to Windows too. It's not near as intuitive as the hype claims.

[Clint Thompson]

OS X is so beautiful and reliable it's unbelieveable.

You don't have to run spyware or install MS programs to be happy with it.

You DO need 512MB though, to be happy!

 

I've had some people complain about the mac becaues of the 1 button (ok, use a 2 button mouse) and then others saying it's not (as fast) as PC's.

Great... but when your 15 minutes into the computer and have a few windows open the mac is much much much less likely to encounter any issues (freezes/crashes) as the PC would. Nothing is more irritating then opening 3 windows at the same time and bringing the PC down because the OS sucks.

 

PC's are a pain and I only recommend them for gaming these days.

If you want a solid system to get some work done (baking, etc.) I feel so much more secure on the Mac then I do on the PC.

[liquid_sky]

The computer is basically going to be for surfing the net, emailing me asking me computer questions (which will be far less with an Apple),.

 

Sorry, forgot this in the last message.

 

There will be just as many questions in OSX. Maybe more if they are used to Windows too. It's not near as intuitive as the hype claims.

 

I let them use XP on my computer last time I was in town and they preferred Gnome when I had booted over to linux.. let them play around in both so i could gauge the intrest in each.. if they can figure out how to navigate around in gnome, type a paper, play some games, and then email themselves from firefox, using osx will be no problem.. just gotta make it even easier on them and put alot of shortcuts out and about

[+Sauron]

I haven't had the pleasure of using a Mac mini yet myself, but based on my experiences with my older iMac, I'd say go ahead and upgrade that RAM to 512 MB. The stock RAM should technically be fine if they are only using it for a handful of tasks, but considering that many people switching from PCs to Mac never figure out that you quit a program by pressing Command-Q instead of closing the window, I'm sure they will end up leaving at least a handful of programs open at any one time. Even then, OS X seems to make much better and more seamless use of virtual memory than any version of Windows, so I'm sure even 256 MB of RAM should be liveable.

 

However, if your parents insist on having Freecell and Solitaire, you're going to have to find some third party Mac versions of these, as Apple has never included these games with the OS. I've been Mac-less for a little while, so unfortunately I can't make any recommendations on free versions of these games.

[liquid_sky]

PySol should do it, would have to add X libraries but hey

[liveinabin]

Am I better off getting them an iMac or the new Mini..

 

Neither. Get an eMac.

My mother in law got one recently and is loving it (we used to have one too before this G5 iMac - I do a lot of graphics work - see AtariAge store ).

The eMac is basically a mini with everything built in (includes keyboard and optical mouse, monitor built in a-la-G3 iMac), has a good speed G4 processor, a nice high resoultion display, good sound through the Harmon Kardon speakers and great connectivity (2 firewire, 3 USB2.0 as opposed to the mini's 1 firewire and 2 USB2.0).

Doesn't cost a lot more than the mini either and the superdrive equipped version has a much better superdrive than my G5 iMac (twice as fast at a fraction of the price).

 

The only extra you'd need to buy for it (bar the obligatory extra RAM) is the tilt and swivel stand. Seems a silly add on but makes the world of difference.

[Tom]

Wouldn't buying a set of playing cards be an option ?

[liquid_sky]

'shuffling is a hassle when the computer will do it for me'. Already thought about that one bro, and that was the responce

[JB]

'shuffling is a hassle when the computer will do it for me'. Already thought about that one bro, and that was the responce

A deck of cards and a shuffling machine?

[Big Player]

Or you could just buy one of those handheld solitare games for $15. That's what I did for my father a few years back. He still plays it all the time.

[joeybastard]

Or you could just buy one of those handheld solitare games for $15.  That's what I did for my father a few years back.  He still plays it all the time.

 

That's funny, we bought both of my inlaws these Radica Solitaires with the bigger screen and they play them constantly. My father in law has actually worn the plastic buttons down to nothing and we got him another one.

 

Sorry to derail this thread slightly

[The Eidolon]

I'd probably go for the mini instead of the iMac. I don't like the idea

of having a nice monitor tied up to a single computer. The monitor

with the iMac is pretty nice, but if you ever want to upgrade, what

can you do with it? The mini has a low up-front cost, and if they like

it they can gradually replace their ugly PC peripherals with nicer

ones as the mood hits them.

 

Any by all means, get a two-button mouse with the new mac. It makes

the transition a little easier for a Windows user.

 

--The Eidolon

[jeepnut24]

We got an XP box with monitor and printer for under $400 new. Major brand too. Not an apple though, but still a good deal. 256 Ram CD-RW, etc... Should surf the net, burn and rip CDs, and type papers for more than a few more years too.

[candiru]

I faced a similar dilemma a few years ago when my in-laws wanted to buy their first computer. They also mainly just wanted basic email, internet and to make cards--Lord how that woman loves to make cards. As a Mac user I was very tempted to steer them towards an Apple computer because it's what I'm more familiar with and figured they'd have fewer issues with it.

 

In the end that was outweighed by the fact that I knew my mother-in-law would be upset (probably at me) if she couldn't go to Wal-Mart and buy the $5 greeting card software and run it on her computer. Also their computer would have been different from their friends'. To this day I don't know if they understand that there are different platforms and not all computers have the same programs on them. They've probably had more than their share of virus and spyware trouble, but overall seem to enjoy their computer.

 

If your parents are motivated and computer-literate enough to make their way in a Windows-centric world then I think a Mac would be a great choice for them. Otherwise I wouldn't push anything on them. If they do go the Mac route, the Apple help forums are a great resource.

[AtariDude]

If you do decide to get the Mac Mini, you will definitely want to have a minimum of 512 megabytes of ram. You can get by with the 256 megs that comes with the machine but if they decide to run too many applications at once, the memory barrier is going to slow down the machine.

 

Myself, I have an Apple G4 Powerbook that is my day to day computer and it came with 512 megabytes of ram. I upgraded to 1 gigabyte of ram a few months back because of virtual pc needing to share memory with the mac.