Technological Octogenarian

I spent the weekend with my grandmother — the same one I stayed with for a month last winter — and aside from lunching at the Ford House and taking her to get her ears pierced, I taught her how to use a computer! She’s used webtv for years and kept having problems, so after seeing both me and my aunt playing (ahem, writing) on our netbooks, she decided that’d be a good idea for her, too.

My mom bought an Acer about a month ago, my dad loaded it up with Skype and assigned her a gmail account, and I was voted as the family most likely to successfully teach her how to use the darn thing. And teach I did. Me, a Mac baby.

For someone who’s never used a mouse or touchpad, she’s doing very well, and I only had one phone call after I got home Sunday night asking how to do something. I figure that’s pretty good for Day One.

Now let’s see if she remembers how to leave comment here. 🙂

18 Comments

  1. My parents use WebTV (I bought it for them 10+ years ago). My dad can see it because it’s on their HUGE TV. There’s no way he can see a laptop, but he still toys with the idea of learning a computer . . . I know I could get it to the computer would show up on the TV screen . . . but considering I would be “Tech Support” . . . LOL!

    Good for her!!!

    • Erica, she did comment that it was a lot easier to see things on the tv screen, although she didn’t have a BIG screen. 🙂

      Good point about tech support. Since I’m not a PC girl I doubt I’ll be fielding those calls.

  2. My octogenarian mother wants to learn to use a computer. Finally. I’ve only been trying to get her interested for the last fifteen years! 😀

    Hello, Mel’s grandmere, from Memphis! xoxo

  3. Nadine

    That’s awesome that you got her set up!

    We bought Matt’s mom a little computer (it’s tiny) so she could skype with us. It’s been working pretty well but we keep telling her not to touch anything else on the computer. Matt set it up so all she had to do was open it and she would be able to skype. So far, so good!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.