Some feedback: my girlfriend, mother and friends.

[Lex Hider]

On Tue, 2004-12-14 at 13:15 +0100, "Mariano F.co Benítez Mulett" wrote: 
> Some more feedback: my mother.
Great timing with this thread, I was about to start a similar thread.

I would love to hear any experiences other people have had with Ubuntu
and mothers, girlfriends and other computer-clueless acquaintances.



The ultimate test for desktop Linux is really if your mother can use it.
And the ultimate test for an OS is if the novice mother can happily use
the same OS as her nerd son.

We got mum a new computer this time last year and went from win98 to
Windows XP. The first thing I did was install Thunderbird and Firefox
and *FORBID* the use of Outlook and Internet Explorer. This was due to
their being superior apps as well as having an eye to converting to
Linux at some time down the track. After transferring her old email and
favourites this was fairly painless, especially considering both apps
were 12 months before a 1.0 product. I got yelled at more [yes my mum
yells first at the computer and then at me] for the differences between
XP and 98's search app even though we went from crashing often to
occasionally.

Now my mum uses:
Thunderbird
Firefox
MS Word & Excel
illegal mp3 downloading stuff
iTunes [to listen to mp3s but mainly to burn music CDs from the mp3s].

It would make my life a lot easier if I could finally rid that computer
of that buggy piece of Microsoft crap and run Ubuntu.

Here's my plan. When I'm home for Christmas, I'll install OpenOffice and
encourage it's use over MS Office. This will be a learning experience
for myself as well as I have only done the most basic things in OO
spreadsheets. If this goes well, I'll probably try the switch at Easter.

Other thoughts
--------------

I don't condone illegal piracy so I'm not too concerned with the p2p
stuff. There probably are solutions out there.

The irony is that iTunes may be the hardest thing to replace on the move
from XP to Ubuntu. Ubuntu doesn't do audio CD creation too well yet.
I'll either leave the switch until a gnome solution comes up or consider
trying to teach mum k3b. At the least the large similarity in interface
between iTunes and Rhythmbox should ease the transition.

My only other concern is setting up the printer. I haven't had one in
ages, but I'm hoping that configuration has improved some.

Are there any good fax apps for Ubuntu?

Lex.
http://www.autoq.org

PS - Our local radio station has a weekly computer help talkback segment
and I reckon about 80% of the time is taken up with: viruses, spyware,
Internet Explorer & Outlook problems. It would be great to largely
eliminate these troubles. And my usual solution for fixing Windows
gremlins is a clean install.

PPS - I am betting that I'll have to revert nautilus to browser
behaviour over spatial due to familiarity with Windows Explorer but I'll
see what happens.

PPPS - I think three of these is too many ;)
Are there any good utilities for creating CD jewel case inserts for
printing. This will also be an important consideration. As stated above,
mum really only uses computer for half a dozen things.