So here's a question.

My 82-year-old father is utterly dependent on his computer for managing household finances, sending email, tracking prescriptions and so forth. His Dell laptop is about four years old and had slowed down so much he hired somebody to fix it, who instead screwed it up so badly now it no longer works at all. He can't even get Windows to boot.

Happily, he had an auto-backup in place, so I don't think he's lost anything.

The question then is, do we try to revive this laptop, by wiping it & reinstalling Windows? Or talk him into another machine, and if so, what machine?

I'm tempted to try to sell him on a Macintosh because of the limited maintenance, but I suspect he'd kick at the price tag.

Thoughts? And please remember: 82. Do not tell me to build a machine and install Ubuntu on it.

dell has some sales going on right now, you might want to take a peek. I think dealnews.com might summarize them all.

I might recommend a mac, but does he really want to change operating systems?

Will it not even boot in safe mode? If so, I'd go with formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows.

It sounds like wipe and reinstall to me as well. I'd suggest installing Windows Defender and Microsoft Security Essentials for anti-malware and virus protection. They are the least intrusive security programs I've ever seen.

I still haven't decided what to do with my inherited iMac. My Aunt could use the computer, but I don't know if she could handle the OS change from Windows. The computer I gave my 94 year old grandfather is ancient, but again, I don't want to disrupt what he's used to. In this case, Fedora Core.

It's a PowerPC iMac, so it's already on its way to being a doorstop.

I have another question in the older people/computer area.

What is out there in terms of add ons or other things for Windows XP for the visually impaired. My mom can make the text bigger with ctrl +, but is there a) a away to make the mouse pointer big and black so she can find it easily and b) is there any way to make the whole thing bigger (especially the scroll bars) without losing clarity. When I change the resloution size, everything looks blutty, which really doesn't help.

Sophia, have you looked at the Accessibility Options under Control Panel?

Nope- I am a total loser when it comes to non-mac computers, even though I use them now!

Okay, so I suggest you look at and play with the Accessibility Options under the Control Panel.

I did! There are some that might work for her so I will call tonight and try to do some support over the phone (sigh). Goodness knows what my uncle will say if her display looks different from his.