Well, we did it! Or more to the point, she did it. This morning my mom put together a computer desk, unpacked her boxes of computer hardware and this afternoon she called, ready to rock.

Here’s the set-up we sent her;

1. 1.3 GHz P4 with 384 MB of RAM, equipped with PCLinuxOS 2007
2. Mouse
3. Keyboard
4. Printer
5. 15″ LCD monitor
6. Headset
7. Headset/Speaker switch-box
8. Speakers
9. Router for sharing existing connection
10. UPS
11. Power distribution box

With no idea of the name of each component, she learned as she went along. On the phone, she got the whole system together, plugged her computer and my nephew’s into the router and… nothing happened. She looked at it as Don talked her through what should be plugged into what, spotted the mis-plugged power cord on her own, corrected the error and the whole works lit up like Christmas. Yeehaw!

I talked her through a basic understanding of PCLinuxOS, the various parts of the KDE desktop and had her open a tutorial (simple text file which I wrote) in KWrite on how to open some of the programs on her computer. Then I told her how to open the Skype program which was already configured with my Skype identity as a contact. After a couple of fumbled attempts, all of a sudden it worked. Now we could talk without paying long-distance charges. Spent the next hour-plus learning how to open her Firefox browser and use Google to search the web. This is a woman who didn’t know what a monitor was yesterday.

That’s my mom. I’m so proud of her. By the time we wrapped it up, she had brain burn. Tomorrow evening we’ll have another session. We couldn’t get her KMail program to pick up her mail, so I have to check the settings in her gMail account to see if we set it up for pop3 access.

She’s on her way to computer literacy and I’m thrilled. It’s been a wonderful day.

Don got a really nice dinner.

New project! My husband Don Crowder (aka eldergeek) and I are so excited.

My mother is in her late 70s and has never owned or operated a computer. Over the last couple of years we’ve been encouraging her to consider learning and since she’s been a lifelong learner, she decided she’d like to. We live in Central Texas and she lives in Central Florida, a bit of a logistics challenge, but not insurmountable, as you’ll see.

For some time now Don has been refurbishing old computers, installing Linux OSs in them and giving them to people who want a computer but have limited resources. This was the perfect opportunity to really do something tangible for my mom, get her started on the road to computer literacy. We sent her a working system, tested and tweaked in our home, last week.

Can any of you remember first placing your hands on a computer? I can, it’s only been 4+ years since I bought my first computer and it’s changed my life. I remember quite well setting it up, sitting down in front of this mysterious, expensive mechanism wondering what to do first, and what to do next, and please please please don’t let me break it. Fortunately, I learn well from books so with a couple of good ones in hand I was on my way. Things accelerated dramatically when I signed up for as many helpful ezines as possible. Don was the writer of an ezine I subscribed to and when I asked him some newbie questions he responded generously and we became friends. The rest, as they say, is another story.

Wouldn’t it be a great thing if my mother could receive real-time tutoring from the very beginning? Don installed PCLinuxOS on both computers so we’d be working with the same system. PCLOS 2007 is absolutely the prettiest, sleekest, most newbie- and intermediate- friendly OS we’ve ever seen (can you say plug-n-play?). I wrote a very basic tutorial and saved it on the desktop with the title “Hi, Mom! Double-click me!” We installed Skype on both computers and with the headsets we both have we’ll be able to talk to each other, long-distance, for free. A computer with built-in live tech support, how’s that for newbie-dream-come-true? I’d be interested to know if anyone else is doing this or plans to and how it works out.

Now-the adventure begins…