My parents use my old PC with Athlon 2000 and 512 MB RAM, I've instaled last Kubuntu with KDE 3.5 a few years ago, and never needed to touch it since then :)

The only problem so far is - once a year they need to use free windows-only application, that doesn't run in WINE, to calculate taxes. They just go to neighborns for a few hours.

My sister also has Kubuntu on her laptop, but she knows how to update it, so I don't know which version she runs now :)

If your relatives only use computer to browse web and write simple documents - linux requires less maintanance. At least that's my experience.

Interestingly, as more government entities adopt linux and foss in general, they have a lot more incentive to provide support for that. So maybe in a couple years these government-issued software will target linux distros.

In this case this isn't government-issued software. It's just some free(as in beer) software attached to law newspaper. They attach it each year with updated forms and formulas to calculate tax.

In Brazil, you can submit your tax return forms using applications that run on Windows, Linux and Macs. They probably run on anything with a J2SE runtime.

There's always VirtualBox for such things, but it might perhaps not run well enough on a slow, old PC.

That CPU doesn't have hardware virtualization. Emulating a PC with Windows would be very slow.

> The only problem so far is - once a year they need to use free windows-only application, that doesn't run in WINE, to calculate taxes. They just go to neighborns for a few hours.

If you're in the US, I've been using the web app tax software and it's been great. Nothing to install locally and my progress is always saved. Maybe not for you if you are in a complex tax situation, but if your life is simple doing it online is incredibly easy.

Just a random thought: as a German I have the impression that people here would be much too paranoid to do something like that over the internet, even with SSL.

The German variant is aptly called "Elster" and while it uses ssl it lacks authentication. I could file a bogus tax return for you if I know your tax number. It's also mandatory for businesses when you need to file a VAT statement. Oh, and last time I checked, the client software required windows - there's a less comfortable online version though.

You can file a bogus tax return for someone in the US just as easily. I'd be surprised if that weren't the case in most countries. I believe there have been occasional incidents of people doing so to collect other peoples' tax refunds, but I don't hear about it very often.

While tangential to the issue discussed here, one example of siphoning tax refunds http://www.cringely.com/2012/03/the-30-billion-hack/ (i think that was linked on HN last week)

VAT statements in Germany are a bit riskier though: If you give the Revenue Service permission to withdraw money and I file a VAT statement for you which shows a large income they'll just go and collect 20%. It's a bit an edge case but that's the reason I manually send the VAT collected each month. I'd feel much safer if the interface was authenticated in some way.

This mirrors my experience. I was really surprised with my parents reaction to Ubuntu. They found Unity easier to understand than Windows. It has opened up a whole new world to them. Before they barely touched the PC, now they email relatives on a regular basis and have switched over the using government and banking services online. As an added bonus I now rarely get calls for unpaid tech support.

Agree. I Installed Ubuntu to my girlsfrind and it was running 1 year without destruction. On the other hand I've taken away administration priviledges from my dads windows 7 and its holding pretty well ...

For my wife, I advised a move to Mac. She needed perfect MS Office compatibility for professional reasons and the computers are much prettier.

And much more expensive :-) and if you want 100% Office comapatability for work by a PC.

Could you show how a DELL or HP is much cheaper?

I did a calculation in 2006, comparing a Lenovo T60p to a MacBook Pro, it was roughly the same. Things did not change since then to my knowledge.

http://codemonkeyism.com/the-recent-lenovo-vs-apple-discussi...

It isn't a matter of comparing like for like; that isn't the problem. The problem is that the single cheapest Mac laptop is $1000. If all you're doing is web and email, you may not need a Core i5 or SSD. You can get a PC laptop which is more than fast enough for Mom usage for less than half that price, especially if you put Ubuntu on it and don't have to run antivirus.

"It isn't a matter of comparing like for like; that isn't the problem."

Never heard that in a discussion. I thought it was all about comparing like to like. The OP didn't say "for reading emails". Especially as he gave the example of 100% Office compatibility (Office 2011?).

Or you could compare live time value. I've broken several Thinkpads in a small amount of time, my wife uses a MacBook for more than 5 years with the newest operating system and applications.

Or, if you need email, only use a phone. Or if you only surf the web, buy a tablet. Or if you only do small amounts of web and email, don't buy anything at all and go to a free library. It depends.

But the argument was that a Mac laptop is much more expensive than a PC laptop for working with Office. Which it is not to my knowledge.

If you don't need it, don't buy it - no argument there.

Is your premise that you need a Core i5 to use Office? That seems like a stretch. You can get Core i3 or AMD A-series laptops in the $500 range which are more than fast enough for Office and still half the price of any Mac laptop, e.g. this one:

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=bqct14...

I only can repeat myself. "If you don't need it, don't buy it - no argument there."

A PC of equivalent power and build quality has a roughly similar cost to a mac.

If you're willing to cut back on the quality and capabilities there are very cheap PC options, but no very cheap Mac options. For someone who just wants to browse the web and edit occasional documents there is a lot of cutting back that can be down.

And don't forget to factor in the anti-malware package, the extra gigabyte of memory it'll take, the beefier processor it will demand and the beefier battery you'll need to run the whole thing.

No. The Mac is cheaper in the end.

> and if you want 100% Office comapatability for work by a PC.

I also wanted her to be safe from viruses and malware. I think her time is well worth the price difference.

If you really want it, doesn't linux run windows applications in some compatibility mode? Wine?

Linux is definitely cheaper than Apple.

I did the same thing on my mothers laptop a couple of years ago, but switched back to Windows a few month later after far too many complaints of "I can't view this document/power point someone emailed me" and "people can't view the document/power point I e-mailed them".

Interesting... My mom seems perfectly happy with LibreOffice. I also set her up with Gmail, so she can view the PowerPoint files without launching LO.

The formatting itn't always preserved perfectly when going back and forth with presentations. Text moves or runs off the bottom of the slide, etc.

Also need to make sure to explain about file formats, or chances are pretty good that they'll try to send a LibreOffice file to a MS Office user.

Office can open Open Document types pretty much universally. More complex formatting is generally screwed up though, just as it is when opening MS types in LibreOffice.

Did Office 2003 get the ODF plugin pushed to it over Windows Update? It's on the oldish side, but there are still a lot of people using it.

I remember Office 2007's ODT support being rather poor, too. Most documents I tried to put through it only came through with minimal formatting preserved.

I didn't start using Linux (and therefore LibreOffice) until after I stopped using Office 2003 on any computers, so I don't know about its support for ODT.

2007 did do fairly poorly from what I remember as well. 2010 though is much better; I go back and forth between those fairly regularly. Fonts are obviously an issue, and complex formatting isn't quite right all of the time, but each suite seems to open most of the other's file types fairly well.

I imagine this is exactly how it would go down if I installed Linux on my parent's computers. I think the key here is administration (at least until Linux is supported by 3rd party consumer companies). You can't move a company to a different OS without great IT support.

Until they call up asking how to get netflix to work

I'd then buy my mom a more modern DVD player. Watching movies on the computer is not for my mom at least and her TV is 9 times larger than her current computer screen (sadly, her 21" Integraph started to misbehave after 15 years)

If they've got a monitor/TV that's compatible with a Roku, just spend the $60 for that.