All iPads Need to quickly setup Mini for mom leaving overseas

Sounds like you don't have much experience with iOS devices and iCloud yourself, I don't even understand how you imagine an "iMac profile" will interact with an iPad.

When is your Mom leaving, and does she live near you now? The best thing might be for you to take her to an Apple store and do a one-on-one setup. They can do the basic setup for your Mom, including setting up an Apple ID for her, and also discuss how your Mom wants to handle her photos and whether or not additional iCloud storage will be useful to her. If you want to send her pictures from your photo collection, ask about how to set up photo stream sharing.

Unless Skype has a video voicemail function (I don't use Skype, so I don't know of they do), there is no way to leave video or even voice messages on the iPad. FaceTime is real time communications only. You can send text messages with iMessage from a Mac or another iOS device, and the recipient can read that at their leisure.

Oh, and don't forget to put Find My iPad on your Mom's iPad. It's a lifesaver when your iPad gets lost somewhere in the house! It could also work to locate an iPad if it's lost outside the house, of course, but locating an iDevice inside our house is what we mainly use it for.

Another thing you might consider, if you can afford it, is getting an iPad yourself. It's so much easier to walk someone through something on an iPad if you also have an iPad in front of you.

Will she have Internet access? One thing you will need to teach her is how to connect to a wifi. And explain the insecurity of public wifi.

As for sharing photos, the easiest way is to set up Dropbox on both her iPad and then use the same logging on your computer. You can then put photos in the same folder and both of you can access them.

I'm 62 and yet pretty computer literate. I think the wifi access will be the most confusing thing for her because you can't set it up for her. And even if you get one with cellular service it will cost a lot to use the US sim. Or you have to teach her to go buy a local sim (assuming she will know exactly what to look for) and how to switch it out. Not simple depending on where she will be going. If she is staying with friends/relatives with wifi maybe they can help her.

Skype has a chat function but I'm not sure about voice messages. I use it all the time but have never explored that. The app does tell you if you missed a call and who it was from. For Skype, I suggest you install the app on your Mac and her iPad and set up user IDs and try it out before she leaves.

I hope she has a great time.

Then it sounds like you have her pretty much covered. My only other suggestion would be not to wait until the last day unless you have to. If possible give her a couple of days at least to use it by herself. She will undoubtedly run into something she doesn't know how to do and it will be easier to work on it while she's in country.

I say this because my 'less than tech literate' husband works over seas. When I first got him an iPad it took me almost a week to get him used to it. And he has 3 engineering degrees! But it was new and unlike any computer he ever used. Now, even after 2 years I still have to provide 'tech support' from half way around the world. It seems there is always something new. My only saving grace is that at least he knows how to connect to the Internet and call Skype me with questions. And yes, he could do some web searches but he has little time and I guess it's just easier to ask me.

Anyway, I hope she's excited and has a great time. I'm sure she very glad to have you around to help her. Please give her my best wishes.

donnaw said:

As for sharing photos, the easiest way is to set up Dropbox on both her iPad and then use the same logging on your computer. You can then put photos in the same folder and both of you can access them.

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I'm not a photo stream user myself, but maybe photo stream would be even better, in that it would be "auto-magical" (i.e. no need to manually select photos for upload). If OP has her AppleID, he could download photos from the cloud to save to a hard drive.

In addition, they could share a (second) photo stream so he could send photos that way. She wouldn't have to bother with selecting photos to share on the 2nd stream since he has access to her main one.

Regards,
Tom