My father is in his mid 70s. He's not big on new things. He likes things to stay the same, not so much because he hates new things, but simply because he doesn't want to have to spend time learning new things. This especially goes with technical things, such as working on computers. So long as he has his "Mahjonng" and "Freecell", he's happy.
His computer is currently a 10 year old desktop with 512 MB of RAM and a 80 GB hard drive. It was running Windows XP, though he's not been running it that much. Why? Because it's slooooooow. I mean slooooooooow. I was home for a few, too-short days and took the plunge to dual boot his system with Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat). His response has been a surprising, "Fantastic, fantastic, FAAAAAAANTASTIC!" Under Windows, his browser (Firefox) was so slow that when clicking on one of his web-based e-mails, he could go grab a soda or sandwich and be back before the e-mail was fully open. Now, it's almost instantaneous. Is his Windows infected? Is it just his computer needs some temp files cleaned out? Perhaps a good cache cleaning? No idea. Don't care anymore. He's got his computer back and that's what's important.
On top of that, I was also able to "share" his HP PSC 2355 all-in-one printer with both my mother's desktop (still running Windows XP and sloooooowly at that) and her laptop. That was a bit of a chore NOT because of the Linux, but because of Windows. How do I know this? Well, my laptop also runs Ubuntu 10.10. I had to print out the wife's and my tickets for the flight home. All I had to do to allow my laptop to print from my father's computer was to say "Look at IP address 192.168.1.170" (the IP address of my father's computer). After that, my laptop said, "This is a HP PSC 2350 series printer. Correct?" I simply confirmed it and I was done. Windows, on the other hand, kept saying, "What kind of printer is this? Where can I find the driver?" What? Really? Oh, whatever. I have my tickets, my parents can print from any computer, and they can also share files if needed. My father has also been able to get caught up on his e-mails now that he's able to fly through them.
This is only the beginning of the experiment. I hope that the streak of good luck continues.
