Help me buy my mum a mac

May 4, 2006 4:50 AM

My mum wants to buy a Mac. What's the best option right now (in the UK)?

Her six year old IBM laptop is creaking to a halt. We (the loving children) want to exchange photographs, videos, e-mail etc and it's getting frustrating - opening a jpeg is a real trial for her with the antique version of AoL she's using. She wants to be able to write, get a digital camera and seems very keen on handwriting recognition, so a tablet's on the shopping list too. I'll sort out the broadband - that I can do - and I know that she will *love* an iPod (but that's for later).

She's not that troubled about money, knows that a Mac will cost more and is prepared to pay for simplicity and good design. She needs to get various Word 6 documents off the laptop and work on them, I'm hoping that a pen drive and Open Office will do the job (I don't really want to buy MS Word). Her main worry is that she will be bewildered by a lot of novelty after ten years on Window95 and AoL (neither of which she ever really 'took to'). Finally she would like to be able to simply and easily connect the computer to an LCD TV - a Sharp Aquos - in the family room although most of the time the machine will live in a bedroom so portability is a plus (but not, we think, a laptop).

What's the best buy right now - and where is the best place to buy it? She is in Oxford in the UK and there doesn't seem to be an Apple Dealer there. All advice gratefully received and quite probably acted on.

posted by grahamwell to computers & internet (29 comments total)

Don't forget the AppleCare!
posted by k8t at 5:00 AM on May 4, 2006

I bought a used Mac for my mom two years ago and it's worked brilliantly. AOL works on Mac OSX just fine.

Forget the handwriting recognition. Is it working? Yes. Is it working well? No.

OpenOffice for the Mac looked pretty bad the last time I checked a year and half ago -- hopefully it has improved by now. The TV display (for movie playback, I assume) may be the trickiest part.
posted by intermod at 5:17 AM on May 4, 2006

If the machine is just going to be used for email, office etc. and if portability is a plus then a Mac Mini would be ideal. I'd also look into an iBook - you'll pay a bit more but the ability to carry it round the house (and answer emails from the garden) is a major benefit. I set my folks up with an iBook a couple of years ago and they love it.

I'm not sure about OpenOffice: I know there's an OSX build but I think it requires some hacks tweaks to get it to run. Never tried it - anyone else with experience?
posted by blag at 5:20 AM on May 4, 2006

I got my parents a Mac and it took them a bit of time to grasp the differences, but they're dead happy with it now. I got them Pages (in iWork) so they could open Word files with less trouble.

I'd either mail order from Apple or maybe make the hike to London or somewhere, but isn't there an Apple place behind the Tesco's on Cowley Road? Somewhere round there anyway.
posted by edd at 5:21 AM on May 4, 2006

I would suspect that a MacBook Pro might be one of the answers, or a Mac mini (Intel one). I'd not buy a PowerPC-powered mac if I were you.

A Mac Mini is nice and portable-ish though you might be better off with a laptop, surprising though it might seem. Remember that a Mac Mini also requires a screen, keyboard, etc.

The best bet is, of course, the Apple Store in Regent Street, London - always busy, but shows off the Mac in its natural environment. You'll not get any 'deals' on Apples - they seem to have done some price-fix deal or something - so you can really shop where you want; Apple stores clearly know Apples.
posted by jamescridland at 5:21 AM on May 4, 2006

(ah, maybe Oxford Macintosh Solutions - but that's not in the location I was thinking of)
posted by edd at 5:23 AM on May 4, 2006

There are strong rumours that Apple is about to announce an Intel powered replacement for the iBook. If she's after a notebook, this might be worth waiting for. Otherwise, a Mac Mini will probably fit the bill - as long as she already has a suitable keyboard and monitor. If not (as seems likely, since she's currently using a notebook), it's worth springing a bit more for the 17" iMac. My experience with OSX is that 1GB of memory is a worthwhile upgrade. Handwriting recognition is probably still a no-no.
posted by salmacis at 5:47 AM on May 4, 2006

Oh yeah, and living just off the Cowley Road in Oxford, I don't know of any local Apple retailer. There's free delivery from the online store, and I think you can tweak the specifications better as well. It's free delivery, so that's probably as good as any place to buy.
posted by salmacis at 5:49 AM on May 4, 2006

Forget the handwriting recognition. Is it working? Yes. Is it working well? No.

I entirely agree but I can't get my point across. Mum can't understand why, after 20 years of promise, handwriting recognition isn't working properly yet. Neither can I.

(she used to bring punched cards home for me to play with)

Thanks for the advice so far, I'm totally warned off Open Office (very helpful) and inclining toward a Intel Mac Mini - there are ergonomic reasons why I'm not keen on a laptop - she needs a big clear display and a really nice keyboard.

Any advice on the display? This will probably be the most expensive, longest lasting and important part of this purchase. Must be 16:9 and - well - cute.

As a bit of a sidetrack, does anyone know a cool way of switching the output from a computer in the study to the TV in the family room? If you have a DivX on your PC, or you want to show off Google Earth, how do you watch it on the TV?
posted by grahamwell at 5:51 AM on May 4, 2006

Formac displays were designed for Macs (though there are now PC versions) and are pretty damn cute. I've got one and it's one of my favourite objects.
posted by altolinguistic at 5:58 AM on May 4, 2006

graham: On the MacBook Pros (and PowerBooks), at least, there's an extra TV out port. You can get this to 'mirror' the main display, so you wouldn't necessarily need to switch.
posted by wackybrit at 6:07 AM on May 4, 2006

TextEdit (free) and Pages (free trial) both open word docs.
posted by neustile at 6:12 AM on May 4, 2006

Most iMacs come bundled with iWork. Check that; Now they come with only a 30 day trial! What a ripoff. I don't know about the UK, but here in the good ol U S of A it is quite easy to get ahold of the 'educational' version of MS Office for quite a low price.

For the display I purchased a HDTV ready Philips Magnavox 15MF605T 15” LCD TV display for about $220.00 refurbed. about 280-300 new. It is also a TV(regular), has composite and VGA input, sound etc.
posted by Gungho at 6:16 AM on May 4, 2006

BTW, the iMac is very easy to carry around the house. I think it also has a cable you can buy to do the TV/video out as well. And for what it's worth, I don't find handwriting recognition to be bad on the Mac, but I print and write in caps so it's always perfect. It's not going to deal with 'proper handwriting' or cursive, IMHO.
posted by wackybrit at 6:33 AM on May 4, 2006

Gungho: From what I understand, the educational version is actually fine for home / non-commercial use, even by non students (though don't quote me on that!). I recall reading the EULA and that only commercial use was explicitly prohibited. I've seen it for around £90 in the UK.
posted by wackybrit at 6:34 AM on May 4, 2006

The rumor sites are saying that the new low-end laptop will be announced some time in May. This will replace the iBook and will have an intel chip. If you want a low-end laptop, perhaps best to wait.
posted by alms at 7:23 AM on May 4, 2006

Don't let yourself get warned off of OpenOffice. It was a PITA back when it required X11 to function on OS X, but now there's a nice native OS X GUI client available. It's simple to install and it's free, so there's no harm in giving it a spin.

Now, it is over featured and clunky, but no more so than MS Office.
posted by ursus_comiter at 7:40 AM on May 4, 2006

No, seriously, do let yourself be warned off OpenOffice. It truly is very, very bad -- takes a year to load, takes huge amounts of disk space, unintuitive interface, and lots more. I've nothing against open source, but OpenOffice gives it a bad name -- steer well clear.
posted by reklaw at 9:43 AM on May 4, 2006

isn't there an Apple place behind the Tesco's on Cowley Road

That closed a couple of years ago. OMS is Eynsham is easy to get to (on the number 100 bus) and has a decent little showroom and the guy that runs it is very nice.

The London Regent Street store is hell when it's busy (most of the time) if you expect to be served. Stay away.

Any Intel Mac model will do depending on which works best. They'll all easily connect to a TV with an Apple Video Adapter. The Intel iBook will be out sooner rather than later, but all the rumour site articles I've seen look like stabs in the dark, so ignore them.
posted by cillit bang at 10:27 AM on May 4, 2006

I've had no troubles in my limited use of NeoOffice (the OpenOffice OS X linked to by Ursus).

Her main worry is that she will be bewildered by a lot of novelty after ten years on Window95 and AoL (neither of which she ever really 'took to').

This was one of my concerns when I switched last year. Turns out that it's a no-brainer. In fact, the biggest issue I've had is that I keep expecting things to be far more difficult than they really are, so I fail to notice that OS X already provides an easy way to do what I want.
posted by five fresh fish at 10:34 AM on May 4, 2006

My father was in a similar situation -- struggling to use his decade old PC for e-mail, writing the occasional letter in Word, and printing pictures of his grandkids. He decided on his own he wanted a Mac, and opted for an Intel-based iMac. Naturally there was a bit of an adjustment, but he's been very happy with his purchase. I've been very happy too, as my tech support role has been greatly reduced.

The iMac is itself surprisingly easy to move around, although I'm not sure about output to a TV.
posted by howling fantods at 11:16 AM on May 4, 2006

Thanks to everyone for your comments. We've conferred and agreed that it should be a 20" iMac with 1Gb (salamacis) Applecare (k8t) and iWork (edd and everyone who dumped on OpenOffice). The price is eye-watering, over £1,500. Jeez. If it were me I would buy something completely different (a mini with an HD LCD TV as monitor), but it's not me, so this is the right thing to do. The only question is still where to get it from. Online ordering seems to have a 17 day delivery window, which isn't so great. I'm going to call around.

Broadband is on order. When her lovely new toy arrives, what'll knock her socks off? (apart from Google Earth).
posted by grahamwell at 2:05 PM on May 4, 2006

I recommend getting either Pages or Office 2004. I'm a paralegal/student in southern CA, and all of my course modules are only available online in .doc format. NeoOffice was unbearably sluggish in importing - sometimes it would just freeze, and then I would have to force-quit the application. Pages was much, much better, although some of the formatting elements were not the same. In the end, I purchased Office 2004 because form in the legal profession is everything, and I couldn't risk having a single error.
posted by invisible ink at 2:26 PM on May 4, 2006

Quicksilver.
posted by ninthart at 2:44 PM on May 4, 2006

what'll knock her socks off?

You've got a webcam? iChat.
Hint: you only need to be dressed from the waist up
posted by blag at 3:02 PM on May 4, 2006

A little late here, but another warning on OpenOffice: I used it for a few days on a Mac before I could get MS Office (and before I realized that there was a trial version of MS Office already installed). I had the auto-save set to backup every 5 minutes. The program crashed (yes, on a Mac). I lost an hour and half of work. Four hours before a deadline. Not a fun experience. Hasn't happened to me in 12 years; not going to happen again.

But I am otherwise in love with my new MacBook Pro, and would strongly recommend it, if it's within your mom's price range. Also, if the kids have Macs too, videoconferencing is really easy.
posted by Dasein at 10:39 PM on May 4, 2006

If you want to buy online, I'd recommend Cancom (ordered my current Mac from them late on a Friday afternoon and it was here first thing Monday morning).
posted by mtonks at 12:33 AM on May 5, 2006

You've got a webcam? iChat.

This won't end well.

... you never write, you never phone, you never iChat .... I mean how much trouble would it be to pick up the mouse .... It's your mother here, not that it seems to mean anything to you ... are you eating enough fruit? Show me! hold the fruit up to the camera ... that's not fruit, what is that? ....

What have I done!

Thanks to everyone again. I'm going to pick it up tomorrow from Western in Bristol who were most helpful.
posted by grahamwell at 9:54 AM on May 5, 2006

A nasty aftertaste. AOL don't, apparently support iMacs, at least not for broadband. They neglected to tell us this a couple of weeks ago. AOL Technical Support has just advised her to buy a Dell.

Ha Ha.
posted by grahamwell at 9:19 AM on May 24, 2006