New Computer for Mom

My mom has failing Visual faculties, and the medication she's on means that she gets easily confused a whole lot, and forgets things. She currently has an IMac and two PC Laptops. While she's not thrilled with the PCs, she absolutely HATES the IMac (possibly because the main function she uses it for is printing, and it never prints without an issue). Plus the computer is set up for handicapped access, which means it's painfully frustrating for a non-handicapped person like me to deal with. So I get frustrated just trying to help her with the computers frequent issues. I get called every time a battery dies or her print queue gets stuck (which happens once a week), and so on.

Anyway, my mom was reading a recent AARP bulletin, and it contained an ad for this computer:
http://www.mywowcomputer.com/. She asked me to look at the ad and evaluate it. So I checked the few reviews at Amazon, and they were fairly positive. I thought great! Then I went to Consumer Reports, and got a completely different story. They hadn't reviewed it, but the staff members in their forums universally thought that the computer was a complete rip-off.

Now I can understand where they are coming from. It's an underpowered machine for the price of a much better one. But anyone who's ever had to find a piece of hardware that is user-friendly enough for the visually impaired/handicapped/easily confused senior gets used to realizing that the standard stuff is just too tough for a person like my mom to handle on her own.

Anyway, one thing they suggested was that she buy an IPad. Now I own an IPad, but I Was told by the Apple staff at a local store that you cannot print directly from an IPad. In other words, she'd have to add a few extra steps into the process, and that would not be a good thing for her.

So my question is two parts:
1. Is there a Desktop Alternative (or is the Wow PC actually the way to go?) Would Windows 8 OS Plus a touch-screen be good for her?
2. If not, then are there any user-friendly tablets that you CAN print web pages directly from?

 

That is a crummy netbook spec desktop with the worst parts imaginable and a free Linux OS.

Just reading the FAQ sickens me. They imply that because it is Linux, that malware is not capable of infecting it.
http://www.mywowcomputer.com/faqs.html

I would not touch that system if I was paid to do that.

 

Lol still doesn't help me.

Here's the actual problem -- almost no one today is addressing some of the REAL issues that seniors have with hardware. Don't get me wrong -- my mom has her own special problems. But things are STILL not at the point where someone like her can use an off-the-shelf PC or Mac without serious difficulty. Some of those old PDAs of Yore actually had the solution, with their big rubber keys, and simple BIG 4-line LCD displays, and simply tailored for the specific functions they were capable of (in other words, so simple that almost nothing unexpected ever happened, other than an LCD segment going bad, or a battery needed to be replaced).

 

This sounds like a serious business opportunity for a senior-friendly entrepreneur.

 

This is probably a really stupid question, but have you asked various senior specialist Doctors and handicap assistance groups for advice?

For example, if you ask a Doctor who treats mostly blind people if he or she knows a company that makes computers for their clients with really bad if not inoperable eyesight, they are many times more likely to know whom to point you at than a general practitioner.

I am almost certain a solution exists. The price range is the problem though. For example if you want a wheelchair access ramp into your home, the person to hire is going to think they are installing a ramp for unloading goods and equipment into your home. That cuts the cost in half or less, and the parts and techniques used are identical.

Strange as it sounds, I suggest looking for PCs built for children. There will still be a price premium, but they will be built to be resistant to misuse and abuse by snotty little booger flingers. The OS will still need some fine polish to work as your Mother will want, but aside from getting a larger monitor and setting it up for her, it should be better than that PoS from the aforementioned company.

Central to this whole thread is just how bad your Mothers eyesight is. Will a larger monitor even help? Or would a high contrast ratio GUI be the best help that can be done. (Both Windows and Linux have free high contrast modes that will help. They are default and all you need to do is set them on and they will persist.)

 

Plus there's Win 7 tablets around, though I couldn't say how good they are.

 

A tablet is something we are considering to replace her Sharp Wizard, an ANCIENT device developed in the stone age (well, the late 1980s/early '90s probably). It would have to be something extremely light so that she can add it to her already heavy pocketbook. She needs something to keep her addresses and phone numbers, and calendar, and so on. An IPad Mini might be ok, if it's light enough. But I'm hoping it has better accessability options than my Ipad does (it has text to speech, but no option to increase the size of the icons or text other than in safari).

It may be ok without that, but I may have to drag her, wheelchair and all, to a store, to try one, which is actually kind of a non-trivial thing, especially as they've removed a lot of the handicap access features from our local mall. And her wheelchair is one they call a 'transport chair', which is designed to be very light, fit in a car trunk, but is terrible for pushing around for long distances (I nearly died last time I brought her to the mall, and that was with a REAL wheelchair).

But she still needs a computer that she can print from. Worst case, I'll pick out an inexpensive desktop computer, maybe check out a large touch-screen monitor to go with it.

 

An update...
OK, I found a couple of apps that allow you to (theoretically) print from your IPad. They had free demos, just to make sure that your printer would work with it. The one I tested worked just fine, though I had to go through a couple of hoops to get it set up right, plus, unless you use a static IP address for the printer, you have to go through a PC or Mac running their software.

OK, well I had a proof of concept -- haven't tried actually tried printing through safari though, but I'd need to spend the $12.95 or whatever it is to be able to print anything other than their test documents.

So step 2, I had to check to see if my mom could use an IPad (let alone an IPad Mini).

I loaded up Safari, went to her supermarket page and handed it to her. I had to talk her through a lot and she was getting a bit frustrated. On the plus side, yes, she could read the page. On the minus side, she got flustered because the flyer did not look the same as it does on the Mac (all the graphics were gone, at least on the view of the flyer, replaced with black silhouettes). Anyway I said "OK make up a fake shopping list" She didn't know what to do exactly. So I said, press the + sign to add an item to your shopping list, and she did, and within seconds of trying to deal with it, she got really upset and said that she can't do it. So I didn't push.

So... looks like no tablet for her for doing her shopping, at least.

 

I feel your pain. My mother is similar. The phrase "I can't do it" is all too common. As is "Why can it not do it like * did?"...