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tablet/notebook computer recommendation

ejk

Critical Thinker
ejk
Joined
Jan 14, 2009
Messages
375
I'm hoping all you wonderful people won't mind providing some very basic guidance for me.

My 80-year old mother in the medical unit of her retirement community, for a couple of weeks at least. She's not a cutting edge techno person, but would like to be able to check her e-mail and surf the web. She'd ideally like to print things, but doesn't have a printer there, so the ability to save stuff she finds on the web for printing later, when she gets home to the desktop and printer, would be good.

I'll be visiting a week from now and would like to bring her something to facilitate contact with the outside world. The iPad comes to mind, but is it the best solution? Things she really wants to do are check e-mail, basic word processing, save and maybe send to herself things she finds on the web. Not much interest in movies or music, but she'd love to have certain kinds of games available. She has free wifi available and I'd be there to set it up, so that's not an issue.

Anyone have suggestions? TIA for any thoughts you might share.
 
My thoughts would be how much could she use a tablet, having a keyboard and screen might be better for her ability to type. There is also the issue keyboard size. But if you are in the price rage of a Ipad then why not a laptop? My grandfather and his wife like theirs.

It is all about exactly what she wants to do and what form factor would work best for her.
 
That's a good point about the keyboard. Maybe I should spend some time this weekend shopping around. I do want to minimize the need for set-up, at least beyond what I can do on a 2-day visit. Hmm...
 
I was going to suggest that rather than a choice between a tablet or notebook to have something that is both but on searching the first review i found for the Dell flip is not good. There might be simlar but better machines out there.


edited to add. Having written the above I looked at the comments under the article and most seem very critical of the review and positive about the machine.
 
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Virtually any piece of equipment you can buy would fill those minimal requirements. I only say "virtually" because I'm not sure just how hard you'd have to try to find one that doesn't.

That means form factor is the important thing. Does she still have good eyesight? Manual dexterity? I'm willing to guess that a large, cheap, POS Dell laptop would suit her better than the newest sexy iProduct.
 
Thank you all for the suggestions. I ended up going with a cute but cheap little netbook, which will work fine for what we hope is just the few weeks until she gets back to her regular computer. We'll see if I guessed right next weekend, but now I have another question. Any recommendations on a basic word processing program? I refuse to pay over $100 for Office when all she'd want to do is type notes or letters. But it would be nice to have something a bit better than Notepad.
 
ejk said:
Thank you all for the suggestions. I ended up going with a cute but cheap little netbook, which will work fine for what we hope is just the few weeks until she gets back to her regular computer. We'll see if I guessed right next weekend, but now I have another question. Any recommendations on a basic word processing program? I refuse to pay over $100 for Office when all she'd want to do is type notes or letters. But it would be nice to have something a bit better than Notepad.
Click to expand...

Open Office is free.

And awesome.
 
ejk said:
Thank you all for the suggestions. I ended up going with a cute but cheap little netbook, which will work fine for what we hope is just the few weeks until she gets back to her regular computer. We'll see if I guessed right next weekend, but now I have another question. Any recommendations on a basic word processing program? I refuse to pay over $100 for Office when all she'd want to do is type notes or letters. But it would be nice to have something a bit better than Notepad.
Click to expand...

Many manufacturers ship machines with MS Works pre-installed. It has a passable word-processor.
 
WordPad?

Should be on there already. Always thought it was a pretty nice basic word processor.
 
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