My mom needs a new computer. She's been plugging along with an old white 13 inch Santa Rosa 2006 MacBook since it was released and I upgraded the RAM for her and updated it to Snow Leopard, but it's just really slow and past its prime at this point with nearly constant beachballs of death. Part if the reason the machine is so slow is that she insists on saving all of her documents to the desktop, including giant videos which come as email attachments and, not quite understanding the concept of URLS, many, many web archive files. I got her two 1TB external hard drives, one for storage, one for backup but she just can't get in the hang of using them.
She's been using Macs since the early/mid 80s when they introduced them at her work and gave employees ones to take home.
Before this laptop, her main machine was one of those white and blue iMacs and she never takes the laptop off her desk unless she's actually traveling out of town which has become more and more rare. She, also, doesn't seem to quite get that she can actually carry her mobile phone with her while making calls. She came with me to the Apple Store recently when I had to have my iPhone replaced and remarked that she found the screens on the 11 inch Airs too small but liked the keyboards ok; the screen size and need to be able to touch type also takes an iPad out of the running.
Her primary usage is lots and lots and lots and lots of email, web browsing, a fair amount of writing in Word and she's recently gotten the hang of how to hook her MacBook up to the tv so she and her boyfriend can watch Netflix. The biggest stumbling block with the latter was neither of them being able to remember how to use the Input button on the remote. She listens to a little internet radio but doesn't use iTunes or do anything with photos or video beyond the aforementioned Netflix streaming and random YouTube videos.
Anyway, do you think I should get her another MacBook despite the lack of any real need for portability or would one of the lower end iMacs suffice? Are the iMacs still having problems with the screens overheating? From the MacBook Air forum here it sounds like Mavericks hasn't resolved the wifi issues many of those are experiencing. I'd want to max out the RAM on either for her. The issue with her saving absolutely everything to the desktop makes me think maybe I should be focusing more on internal storage size than a speedy SSD but slowness is the major problem with her current machine.
The only other thing really is that she's in the routine of sitting at her desk for hours while sorting through her million daily emails from lists she insists are not just spam while watching the TV which faces her desk. There's a sofa in between the two which her boyfriend sits on. With the MacBook she can of course see the TV screen just fine but a head level iMac might make that kind of problematic.
So, what would you get for her?
She's been using Macs since the early/mid 80s when they introduced them at her work and gave employees ones to take home.
Before this laptop, her main machine was one of those white and blue iMacs and she never takes the laptop off her desk unless she's actually traveling out of town which has become more and more rare. She, also, doesn't seem to quite get that she can actually carry her mobile phone with her while making calls. She came with me to the Apple Store recently when I had to have my iPhone replaced and remarked that she found the screens on the 11 inch Airs too small but liked the keyboards ok; the screen size and need to be able to touch type also takes an iPad out of the running.
Her primary usage is lots and lots and lots and lots of email, web browsing, a fair amount of writing in Word and she's recently gotten the hang of how to hook her MacBook up to the tv so she and her boyfriend can watch Netflix. The biggest stumbling block with the latter was neither of them being able to remember how to use the Input button on the remote. She listens to a little internet radio but doesn't use iTunes or do anything with photos or video beyond the aforementioned Netflix streaming and random YouTube videos.
Anyway, do you think I should get her another MacBook despite the lack of any real need for portability or would one of the lower end iMacs suffice? Are the iMacs still having problems with the screens overheating? From the MacBook Air forum here it sounds like Mavericks hasn't resolved the wifi issues many of those are experiencing. I'd want to max out the RAM on either for her. The issue with her saving absolutely everything to the desktop makes me think maybe I should be focusing more on internal storage size than a speedy SSD but slowness is the major problem with her current machine.
The only other thing really is that she's in the routine of sitting at her desk for hours while sorting through her million daily emails from lists she insists are not just spam while watching the TV which faces her desk. There's a sofa in between the two which her boyfriend sits on. With the MacBook she can of course see the TV screen just fine but a head level iMac might make that kind of problematic.
So, what would you get for her?
