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.

Interesting article:

You Don't Need to Regularly Reinstall Windows; Here's Why

Today we're talking about the myth that Windows slows down over time, and how to solve the problem. The reality is that Windows doesn't slow down if you just take care of your PC a little more. Follow these procedures, and you won't have to wonder if spending hours backing up data, installing from disc, and re-installing your essential applications is really necessary.

I would say it's not a myth that the average Windows computer slows down over time - the myth seems to be that this is inevitable.

eta:

'm not going to sit here and tell you that your Windows PC will never slow down—because for many people, they almost always do. What actually slows your PC down are too many poorly written applications that stay resident in memory and waste CPU cycles, having too many badly written low-level applications that hook into Windows, or running more than one antivirus application at a time. And of course, if you've run your PC's hard drive out of space, you can hardly blame Windows for that.