PC for Mom?
2002-09-30 - 2:21 a.m.
Ugh, Sunday-Monday is always such an odd work day. I leave for work and there's not much traffic, as it's the "weekend." At the end of the shift, I go home and it's Monday morning.
I feel much better than I did Saturday-Sunday, when I had this horrible headache that seemed partially related to not getting enough sleep. I slept Friday night and didn't get around to napping before work.
I've been thinking about getting a new, cheap computer, and figured if I get it, I'll set up my old one for Mom for burning CDs, and for my nearby sister and I to use when we visit.
Warning, computer configuration stuff follows. Skip the rest of this entry if this stuff bores you--there is some stuff about adapting for the computer-phobic.
The old PC is a 366MHz Celeron eMachine. It's a bit slow for watching video files. I got it used a few years ago, $320 sounds right, with a 17" monitor. I'll put at least 128M of RAM in it and a 40 gigabyte hard drive.
Now, I gave my mom a computer once before. It didn't catch her interest much. I hoped to hook her with email, but she got in the viscious circle of turn-it-on, look-there's-no-email, so-don't-turn-it-on-so-much, so-don't-send-email, so-usually-no-email. Also the mouse was a difficult concept, so she gave up on it quickly.
Now I have a new hook. A PC can do something which has really caught her interest. It can make CDs. I made a CD of her playing songs on the piano a few years ago, and she still asks for more copies once in a while. I make the CDs and mail them to her.
I also made a CD of Dad's memorial service this year, for some who were there and for some who couldn't make it.
This sounds like an easy enough sequence: Turn the computer on (the monitor will stay in powersave mode when the computer is off). It will say some stuff. Ignore the stuff until it says "Login." Enter a simple login and password, hitting the "Enter" key after each.
Want to make three CDs from the year 2000 piano songs? Insert a blank CD and type:
2000cd 3
After the first one finishes, the CD will eject. Put the next one in.
Am I crazy for giving my computerphobic mom Linux? Maybe. I think with a few aliases though, I can make burning CDs easier than using any other OS.
I'll have Xwindows for me to play with, and I'll make it dual-boot so my sister can use Windows, but the default will just be console Linux. I'll throw in a modem, ethernet card for future who-knows-what use... maybe even a DVD-rom drive (or make the burner a CDRW/DVD-rom combo).
She likes to record TV shows, and she's been using on-screen programming for that purpose since I left home over a decade ago, so I know she can do this. One time I was down there, there was a show about to come on, and she still set it up to record in advance! I told her she could just hit record, but she's happy knowing just one way to work it. :)
An alias called "menu" might be handy too. This could tell her all the stuff I set up for her. I made a menu-like interface for DOS a long time ago... menu.bat would display a list of batch files to run different programs, and each of those would run menu.bat at the end, so the command prompt "C:" would always display at the end of a menu. This setup could be like that one was.
Do you think I can get her to type "shutdown" every time? Just in case, I'll set it up using the ext3 filesystem (journalling, no long "fsck" after improper shutdowns).
