Help me purchase the correct laptop for partially mobile nursing home residing father!

May 21, 2008 9:37 AM

Looking to purchase a no-frills laptop for my father who currently resides in a nursing home.

He'd like to be able to do the following:

- surf the web
- send/receive emails
- view pictures
- work wirelessly

But, here's the catch...he's:

- legally blind with some peripheral vision left (macular degeneration sufferer)
- mostly deaf, with one ear better than the other
- computer literate for the most part


Now, my searching has brought me to this model,
but not sure if this will do the trick or not...does anyone have any experience with SeniorPC? It has the stuff to help the vision impaired, which is nice.

I'd like to be able to have someone come in a set it up for him once I purchase it, if possible.

Any and all information/tips would be appreciated!

I'll definitely want to add a big keyboard and mouse from these folks after I purchase the laptop.

Thanks hivemind!

posted by littleredwagon to computers & internet (7 comments total)

If you are going to add a big keyboard and mouse anyway, i would think you could go to walmart and buy one of their $400-500 models, and just make the icons and such larger in Windows display setting
posted by Mr_Chips at 9:46 AM on May 21, 2008

Dell vostro 1500 is on sale for 450 right now. Its got a 15" screen and its half the price of that laptop you linked to. Go cheap so you wont be disappointed if it gets dropped a few times.
posted by damn dirty ape at 9:49 AM on May 21, 2008

I'm a big fan of refurbished Macbooks with a solid warranty, which can be purchased direct from apple for under 1100 depending on model.

The laptop you link has a roughly equivalent screen size but the warranty is absolutely horrible.

You can get a dell, buy the monster warranty/service for it and buy a really nice 22 or 24 inch screen to give your father more real estate and come out @ about 1100 or so. If you go with windows try and get XP, if you can't get XP from the manufacturer it's worth the expense to buy a CD with it.
posted by iamabot at 9:57 AM on May 21, 2008

I'd go a refurb mac with OS X: The visual assist offered in OS X is pretty integrated into the whole OS, while accessability features on XP seem to mainly be geared to missing fingers and pissing people off (I'm looking at YOU, StickyKeys...) Go and fiddle with a display model, at any rate, to see what I'm talking about.

If $1100 is too spicy for you, 900mhz G3's are down to about $300, and my mom has been pretty happy with the G3/700 running 10.3, it seems.
posted by Orb2069 at 10:20 AM on May 21, 2008

Here is a link to the refurbished Mac's. You want to go about halfway downthe page for the regular Macbooks. A white 2.2ghz is 950, add Applecare out to 3 years and you get to 1200, a bit more than what you want but it's worth it and a solidly better machine (build, features/longevity) than the one you linked in your post.
posted by iamabot at 10:43 AM on May 21, 2008

Folks, I hear what you're saying about Mac...I really do. I wish I had started him on that platform years ago...

Unfortunately, he's an XP guy. Appreciate all the tips!

(Probably will be going Mac myself in the near future, so your info is NOT falling on deaf ears!)
posted by littleredwagon at 10:56 AM on May 21, 2008

You can run XP on the Mac :)
posted by iamabot at 10:18 PM on May 28, 2008