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Linux for Grandma - Part III, Finale
Okay, it has been a few months since I have set my 83-year old grandmother with a desktop PC running Kubuntu 7.10. Just to recap, she has never used a PC before. She doesn't know Windows or Mac or Linux. It was the first time she used a mouse, though she is a touch-typist. I configured everything in advance. I removed everything that I thought would be distracting or not used. I created a GMail account, helped her set up online banking, and created bookmarks for the few websites she would use. I gave her some basic training on the things she will do regularly. We sat down over a period of a couple weeks and I gave her lessons on using the things she wanted to know.
First off, the mouse. I swear before God and everyone who can read this I will *NEVER AGAIN* make fun of Apple's one-button mouse. She did catch on to the scroll wheel pretty fast, and liked that, but the left- and right-click was nothing but trouble. A single big button would have been perfect. I must do penance. I think I'll buy an iPod shuffle or something as a tribute to Apple.
Actually, controlling the mouse was a big deal. It took us a while to get the right acceleration rate, but she still had problems with accuracy. I found out that KDE has the ability to adjust the size of the borders of a window, but for some strange reason the WIDGETS don't adjust in size. WTF? The ability to make the close and resize widgets larger is a must. I looked everywhere, but those would not change.
Watching her learn to click the mouse button was educational. Instead of just a soft tap, it would be a deliberate lift-the-finger-two-inches-up-and-mash-down movement. That would invariably jerk the mouse when clicking and sometimes it would take 3 or 4 tries to hit what she wanted. This, however, got better with practice. But still, we did go through two cheap mice before she got better and I bought something decent. Watching $5 mice die is one thing, but a good Logitech optical is a different story.
Grandma has a life. She is very active in church, women's club, gardening, art league, the local historical society, etc. So, while she originally had intentions of taking classes on the PC and learning the computer, all she really had time for was the basics: online banking and e-mail.
Both took some time and practice, but she can handle the basics of Firefox with ease -- and some note cards. E-mail was the most confusing. I don't know why, but she insisted on trying to click the little "star" icon in GMail to try and open new messages. Still, she can now send and receive e-mail -- including displaying pictures -- without assistance.
Banking was easier, with one exception. Her personality is such that if first a PIN or password doesn't work, try it again 27 times in a row. At least once a month the ATM eats her debit card because she insists on entering the wrong PIN 3 times in a row, then goes "Oh, it is the other one" after the card is gone.
So, every once in a while she hit the CAPS LOCK key and entered her banking password wrong three times in a row and it locked her account.
But, she was able to navigate U.S. Bank's website with relative ease. She figured out how to handle multiple accounts, transfer funds, verify checks have cleared, etc. She refuses to use online bill pay and online statements, but that is a personality quirk and not anything to do with learning how. She doesn't trust it.
There were only two other issues in general.
The first was not really grasping the concept of a windowed application. When I'd tell her to "look in the lower right corner of the Firefox window for the GMail icon", she'd always tell me "there is just a clock there!". She was looking at the task bar. To her the bottom of the screen was the bottom of the window. And no, hiding the taskbar was not an option. That just prompted some serious confusion.
The second item was closing Firefox before shutting down the computer. 9 times out of 10 she would hit the window resize widget and not the close. Then, oblivious, she would shut down the PC. The next time she booted, Firefox would pop open and complain about a crash. I think this is related to the too-small widgets.
Finally, a general opinion of Linux for Grandma.
She had no problems that were specific to Linux. 99% of her activity was limited to the web browser, and she handled that fine. Her home page shows local weather, sports scores and gas prices. Beyond that, she checked banking, her church website and e-mail. Everything appears and works the same regardless of the OS, since it was all browser based.
For limited use, like browser based applications only, there is no reason not to use Linux. In fact, most people in her case wouldn't know the difference. The three main reasons to use Linux are that it works, it is free, and runs on low end hardware fairly well. Nor did I need the overhead of anti-virus and anti-spyware software.