Calling All Grandmas!
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Okay, so I have an idea. I was having a discussion this morning with someone who said what to me is the absolute backwards of how I imagine reality... that if you needed a simple computer for your grandma that Linux is the last thing that you would use. This blows my mind, because to me this is the ultimate use case for Linux. It's simple, takes care of itself, auto-updates, doesn't have licensing complexities, etc.
So, of course, just saying that isn't enough. We need grandmas, we need a test! I think that this is a great idea. I did this with someone who has never used Windows back around 1998 or 1999 and did a test of Windows 98 vs. KDE 1.3 and they said that KDE was way easier to use - because they didn't have any former Windows experience. If we can find grandma, grandpas, or really anyone that has no computer experience we should do some tests and make a video to see how they react to three systems.... Linux Mint, ChomeOS and Windows 10 to see what they find to be easier when they don't have preconceived notions coming along with them.
Hard to find these people, I know. And really, light computer users coming from Windows 98, 2000 or XP would suffice. Really light users from Windows 7 might even cut it.
What do you think? My guess is that ChomeOS wins for most users, Mint comes in second and mostly for user with document editing needs and that Windows 10 trails big time.
Thoughts? How do we find people and how do we make it happen and how do we properly build the test to make it fair?
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Before Chromebooks I had set a couple of older people up with Zorin. But the was back in like 2010-2011.
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@stacksofplates said in Calling All Grandmas!:
Before Chromebooks I had set a couple of older people up with Zorin. But the was back in like 2010-2011.
How did they like it? I find Ubuntu very hard to use and yet family members that use Windows only lightly still found it easier than Windows to use.
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@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@stacksofplates said in Calling All Grandmas!:
Before Chromebooks I had set a couple of older people up with Zorin. But the was back in like 2010-2011.
How did they like it? I find Ubuntu very hard to use and yet family members that use Windows only lightly still found it easier than Windows to use.
It was really easy for them. I don't know what they would find difficult. They don't need to interact with CLI at all so they just used Firefox and installed packages through the package manager.
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That's how my SIL was with Ubuntu. It just worked. They've now moved to ChromeOS because it is even easier still.
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The only issue one of them had was some obscure printer. It auto picked the driver but it printed the colors incorrectly or the pages were out of whack. I forget what I did but it didn't take too long to fix.
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@stacksofplates said in Calling All Grandmas!:
The only issue one of them had was some obscure printer. It auto picked the driver but it printed the colors incorrectly or the pages were out of whack. I forget what I did but it didn't take too long to fix.
That's not bad. We get so many printer and wifi issues with Windows that Linux normally doesn't suffer from that it must happen the other way from time to time too. I had to print from Linux for the first time in forever the other day and it was the smoothest thing ever. My wife who uses Windows most of the time was pretty shocked, she'd never seen a printer work so easily before - ever.
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@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@stacksofplates said in Calling All Grandmas!:
The only issue one of them had was some obscure printer. It auto picked the driver but it printed the colors incorrectly or the pages were out of whack. I forget what I did but it didn't take too long to fix.
That's not bad. We get so many printer and wifi issues with Windows that Linux normally doesn't suffer from that it must happen the other way from time to time too. I had to print from Linux for the first time in forever the other day and it was the smoothest thing ever. My wife who uses Windows most of the time was pretty shocked, she'd never seen a printer work so easily before - ever.
Ya that was the only time I can remember that one didn't just work when it was plugged in directly. Even my old like 13 year old Brother laser printer just works when it's plugged in.
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I setup my sister, her kids and my grandmother all on Ubuntu and Mint respectively.
My sister and her kids needed a simple to use, no fuss system on which to create and edit documents.
My Grandmother needed a web browser and email client. (and she preferred the way it looked).
Has been working great for a long time for em.
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I've never found someone with the experience of someone trying Linux (a reasonable one at least) and finding Windows 8 or later to be better. Does anyone have any experience with that? And if so, any feedback on what factors made it happen?
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@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
I've never found someone with the experience of someone trying Linux (a reasonable one at least) and finding Windows 8 or later to be better. Does anyone have any experience with that? And if so, any feedback on what factors made it happen?
Better is often subjective to the applications which the user wants to run. Some things just don't operate within the Linux world. This has always been my biggest issue personally.
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@DustinB3403 said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
I've never found someone with the experience of someone trying Linux (a reasonable one at least) and finding Windows 8 or later to be better. Does anyone have any experience with that? And if so, any feedback on what factors made it happen?
Better is often subjective to the applications which the user wants to run. Some things just don't operate within the Linux world. This has always been my biggest issue personally.
People in the categories that I mentioned, though, will not likely have any applications that they want to run, or at least not preconceived notions of them. Not likely to find a grandma without computer experience looking to get into gaming, for example.
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After testing out multiple operating systems the easiest for older people I have seen is don't give them a computer at all give them an Ipad
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@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@DustinB3403 said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
I've never found someone with the experience of someone trying Linux (a reasonable one at least) and finding Windows 8 or later to be better. Does anyone have any experience with that? And if so, any feedback on what factors made it happen?
Better is often subjective to the applications which the user wants to run. Some things just don't operate within the Linux world. This has always been my biggest issue personally.
People in the categories that I mentioned, though, will not likely have any applications that they want to run, or at least not preconceived notions of them. Not likely to find a grandma without computer experience looking to get into gaming, for example.
Now it shouldn't be as much of an issue. Previous to the big SaaS wave, people were hooked on their home software like Quicken and other bad one off software packages.
Sure there was GNUCash but you can't really compare a full double entry accounting suite to Cash based Quicken.
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@Minion-Queen said in Calling All Grandmas!:
After testing out multiple operating systems the easiest for older people I have seen is don't give them a computer at all give them an Ipad
Always this.
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The quicken type products where the first thing that jumped to my mind. More on the home user doing their own taxes. Until a few years ago you had to run the software on Windows or Mac... Now it's all web based, no local software....
As mentioned SaaS is and has changed the field. So many more things can be done purely in the browser.
For the people Scott mentioned, a Chromebook will likely do everything they need. That or an iPad.
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@Dashrender said in Calling All Grandmas!:
The quicken type products where the first thing that jumped to my mind. More on the home user doing their own taxes. Until a few years ago you had to run the software on Windows or Mac... Now it's all web based, no local software....
As mentioned SaaS is and has changed the field. So many more things can be done purely in the browser.
For the people Scott mentioned, a Chromebook will likely do everything they need. That or an iPad.
Yeah, this type of product, that was so crucial twenty years ago, doesn't exist in any practical desktop form today. What a silly thing to run as a fat application that you have to acquire, download, update, maintain, back up, etc.
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@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@Dashrender said in Calling All Grandmas!:
The quicken type products where the first thing that jumped to my mind. More on the home user doing their own taxes. Until a few years ago you had to run the software on Windows or Mac... Now it's all web based, no local software....
As mentioned SaaS is and has changed the field. So many more things can be done purely in the browser.
For the people Scott mentioned, a Chromebook will likely do everything they need. That or an iPad.
Yeah, this type of product, that was so crucial twenty years ago, doesn't exist in any practical desktop form today. What a silly thing to run as a fat application that you have to acquire, download, update, maintain, back up, etc.
20 years?
It was less than 5 you still had to buy or download the new version, install it, etc....
I only really recall last year getting to do all of it online... But I leave room that it might have been the last few.
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@Dashrender said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@scottalanmiller said in Calling All Grandmas!:
@Dashrender said in Calling All Grandmas!:
The quicken type products where the first thing that jumped to my mind. More on the home user doing their own taxes. Until a few years ago you had to run the software on Windows or Mac... Now it's all web based, no local software....
As mentioned SaaS is and has changed the field. So many more things can be done purely in the browser.
For the people Scott mentioned, a Chromebook will likely do everything they need. That or an iPad.
Yeah, this type of product, that was so crucial twenty years ago, doesn't exist in any practical desktop form today. What a silly thing to run as a fat application that you have to acquire, download, update, maintain, back up, etc.
20 years?
It was less than 5 you still had to buy or download the new version, install it, etc....
I only really recall last year getting to do all of it online... But I leave room that it might have been the last few.
I didn't say when it switched, only that 20 years ago it was super critical. We started seeing key enterprise apps move to web based instead of desktop around 1999 - 2001. Same time that MS published their guides to DNA and such. That was 2000 and was the death knell for VB6. By that point, even MS had admitted the desktop was dead for business apps going forward.
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Awesome... Yet new things still come out that use Java and flash.
The world sucks sometimes. Lol
