I would advise that whatever she ends up getting, Mac or PC, that you at least steer clear of Windows XP. Even the most diehard Windows fans have to admit that XP is now a shockingly bad choice in operating system. To be fair, it is 10 years old. But so many computers running XP today have users complaining about how it's 'too slow' and laggy even on hardware only a couple of years old.

She needs to move on from XP, and given that she would have to go through a learning process to adjust to windows 7, she may as well make the switch to OS X.


As to your lack of Mac knowledge, I can sympathise. I have been working in I.T. for 8 years now but only in the last 18 months or so have I been managing Apple hardware. Having used nothing but PC's my entire life I bought myself a Mac so I could learn it and be able to support it better and honestly, I am a convert and whenever people at work ask me what they should buy I answer Mac.

Having said that I can appreciate the difficulty in showing the non-computer enthusiasts how to use a new system. Age is mostly irrelevant, if you have an interest in computers you learn, if you don't, then you learn as much as you need to in order to perform a task but as soon as it doesn't work quite as you expected it's giving up time. It can be very frustrating!

Originally Posted by Rockford

I’ll probably get a month’s subscription to Lynda.com ($25 so not much) and get her to try out a few of the basic courses in both Mac and Win7 and see if she is any more comfortable seeing them in action.

Apple has its own introductory web pages and video tutorials:

Apple - Support - Search

Apple Retail Store - One To One - Mac 101

Mac 101: The Finder

Apple - Support - Videos

Apple - Support - Videos