All in all, our plan (see Part 1) worked pretty well. Mom had to wait a few days after her new Dell was delivered for an appointment with Alyx, her computer consultant. During that time, Time Warner patched up a couple of loose ends and Dell delivered an additional box that had gone missing (I never did find out which one it was). As with most new computers, a large amount of effort went into moving data over from the old computer. The old HP had a CDRW drive, so everyone agreed that transferring the data to CDs would be the easiest thing. Not so fast, it said in an old wheezing voice. No CD’s for you!
Prompting my mother to write:
Belatedly naming my old computer: Remember Hal from “2001″. This computer is named after it. Hal is in charge and Hal does whatever he wants to do, disputing my authority. He is about to get the ax.
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My mother has decided to replace her 8 year old HP Pavilion with something that doesn’t suddenly stop responding for minutes at a time and can play online videos without stuttering. Since we no longer live in the same city, I can’t go shopping for one with her but I told her that we could still get her set up with a new system.
I haven’t tried this before but I think there are two keys to making it work. We’ll have someone on my mom’s end with some technical skills, a woman named Alyx, who does computer consulting. She will be able to get everything unpacked, plugged in and running. Once that’s done, she will also set up a remote desktop connection, using LogMeIn. This service is set up on her current computer and it has been a huge help when I need to see her screen or make changes that are too hard to describe to her. The free version of this service does everything that we need.
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