My Mother-In-Law’s Computer

Rose is my mother-in-law and she has been on the world wide web since it has been out there.  She is on her third desktop computer and uses a business class connection.  Now, she wants to get a laptop.  She’s been on the web sites reviewing all the specs and yesterday she dragged me out to CostCo to look at their machines.

She was sort of upset when she couldn’t get spec sheets to take home on the various models they had on the floor.  Unfortunately, she is making the mistake many people make when they are in the market for a PC.  She is all wrapped up in the specifications of the hardware and has not answered the prime question.  “What do you want to do with the machine?”

I asked her and she said, “Oh, just play.” 

Okay, but that’s not quite right.  I probed.  “Do you want to carry it around?”

“No, but I don’t want something too heavy.”

Good, she’s 83 and not always steady on her feet.  I put her in front of the 8 different kinds of HP laptops on display.  “How big a display do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t want that real big one.  The 15.4 inch is about right.”

Better, but she now wanted to sit down and compare gigahertz processors between models.  I’m sure it’s the horse power thing and I wasn’t going to get any further at the store.

Back at her house in South suburban Chicago I started to observe how she lives.  Her house is a 60 split-level ranch with a family room in the basement where her PC is hooked up. 

Ah Ha!  She really wants to use the laptop wirelessly in her kitchen and upstairs bedroom.  She wants to surf the Internet at her convenience rather than go down 2 flights of stairs.  Now, we are getting somewhere.

The moral of the story is that when buying a PC the most important part is understanding what you want to do with the device.  Once you have that under control the decision will come easy.

One final moral, I’m going to let my mother-in-law pick her own machine.