Simple backup option non-techy person

Mike Easter wrote:
Chris wrote:
If I gave her linux I would then become the *only* person she can turn
to for help.

I never recommended linux to a couple of people (elsewhere) that it was
a pain to support on Windows.Â* Doing it w/ the phone was misery; doing
it w/ TeamViewer was OK when that would work for the problem, but of
course not for such as connectivity problems.

One of those people now deceased did just fine while visiting and using
a linux system here; the other stopped needing help when she went to
chromebook.

The guy who died considered going Mac, but I didn't know who was going
to support him -- even tho' I figured he would need less support, I
didn't know where it was going to come from, as I didn't have a Mac
system to look at.


I found the opposite experience. Non-techie friends and family that
required countless help session calls for malware, viruses, and general
f-ups of systems was greatly reduced by installing Linux on their
systems. Once setup, often setup with auto-updates, and for the
dementia-afflicted individuals their own non-admin profiles allowed
trouble free computing. Also rather that having to painstakingly walk
thought: "see this, go to the upper-right thingy, now click..., then
click..." I can just send them a cut-n-paste command string to fix it.
Example 2007 converted parents to Ubuntu and it has been pure bliss.

--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On 5/4/2020 10:32 AM, Mike Easter wrote:
Chris wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

Well; I don't equate a phone's data plan with what I would be looking
for, but one could make it do 'something'.

But, I don't know if you can count 10G of phone data plan as being
the equivalent of 10G of non-phone/ computer internet connectivity at
4G/LTE speed.Â* That would require decent tethering capabilities of
the phone, the computer, and the provider.

Your lack of understanding of how smartphones work is showing. There's
nothing special required other than a decent mobile signal. Why would
mobile 10GB be any different from landline 10GB?

Well, I do /have/ a smart phone w/o a plan which I use its smartness and
wifi connectivity and bluetooth for a number of useful purposes.Â* The
rare circumstance I need a mobile phone and use the old clamshell w/ a
plan only for voice and receiving text.Â* And it has bluetooth.

If I'm going to send/receive text from home, I use a desktop computer
and fullsize keyboard and googlevoice, not a cell phone.

The constraints point I was making about tethering requires a tethering
capable phone, which not all are, and a mobile provider who allows
tethering which not all do.Â* The tethering capabilities of the computer
would be its wifi, which not all 'computers' have, but a laptop would.



Can you explain the advantages of paying for a smartphone with text,
data and voice; and for old clamshell w/ a plan only for voice and
receiving text.
old clamshell I assume is something like the Samsung Guto line of phones

On 5/4/20 9:07 AM, Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
Chris wrote:
If I gave her linux I would then become the *only* person she can turn
to for help.

I never recommended linux to a couple of people (elsewhere) that it was
a pain to support on Windows.Â* Doing it w/ the phone was misery; doing
it w/ TeamViewer was OK when that would work for the problem, but of
course not for such as connectivity problems.

One of those people now deceased did just fine while visiting and using
a linux system here; the other stopped needing help when she went to
chromebook.

The guy who died considered going Mac, but I didn't know who was going
to support him -- even tho' I figured he would need less support, I
didn't know where it was going to come from, as I didn't have a Mac
system to look at.


I found the opposite experience. Non-techie friends and family that
required countless help session calls for malware, viruses, and general
f-ups of systems was greatly reduced by installing Linux on their
systems. Once setup, often setup with auto-updates, and for the
dementia-afflicted individuals their own non-admin profiles allowed
trouble free computing. Also rather that having to painstakingly walk
thought: "see this, go to the upper-right thingy, now click..., then
click..." I can just send them a cut-n-paste command string to fix it.
Example 2007 converted parents to Ubuntu and it has been pure bliss.

Johnathan,

What your your preferred distro be for non-techies and seniors?

Has anyone ever looked at the systems designed for seniors that are
based on Linux?


--
Ken
MacOS 10.14.6
Firefox 70.0.1
Thunderbird 60.9
"My brain is like lightning, a quick flash
and it's gone!"

Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

I never recommended linux to a couple of people (elsewhere) that it was
a pain to support on Windows.Â* Doing it w/ the phone was misery; doing
it w/ TeamViewer was OK when that would work for the problem, but of
course not for such as connectivity problems.

I found the opposite experience. Non-techie friends and family that
required countless help session calls for malware, viruses, and general
f-ups of systems was greatly reduced by installing Linux on their
systems. Once setup, often setup with auto-updates, and for the
dementia-afflicted individuals their own non-admin profiles allowed
trouble free computing. Also rather that having to painstakingly walk
thought: "see this, go to the upper-right thingy, now click..., then
click..." I can just send them a cut-n-paste command string to fix it.
Example 2007 converted parents to Ubuntu and it has been pure bliss.

You are a more experienced administrator than I.

You 'administratively' planned and configured their usage. The only
opportunity I had to administratively plan someone's usage was for the
guy who visited and who I provided a linux computer to and who did fine
here.

--
Mike Easter

In article , knuttle
wrote:

Can you explain the advantages of paying for a smartphone with text,
data and voice; and for old clamshell w/ a plan only for voice and
receiving text.
old clamshell I assume is something like the Samsung Guto line of phones

a smartphone is a computer that fits in your pocket, which can do a
wide variety of things not possible on a feature phone (or laptop for
that matter), it can access the internet at any time and normally has a
*much* better camera (and related apps) than what's available on a
feature phone.

a smartphone can also be used solely on wifi, without any cellular plan
at all.

knuttle wrote:
Can you explain the advantages of paying for a smartphone with text,
data and voice; and for old clamshell w/ a plan only for voice and
receiving text.
old clamshell I assume is something like the Samsung Guto line of phones

Well, the history is kindofa long story, but I'll see if I can tell it
succinctly, which I'm not very good at.

The basic premise is that I only need a mobile for when I travel by air
out of town/state, and it started when the a/p stopped putting payphones
in the terminal.

Nah. That's too long a story.

At one point, I lost a cheap feature-type tracfone by leaving it in a
rental car and then bought a smartphone on sale and actually got a
different plan that was even cheaper than tracfone's. That phone is a
BLU Grand Energy android touchscreen etc.

Somewhere along the way, I discovered that transitioning between the
cameras on the phone caused it to go into 'lockdown' failure and I
couldn't solve it by troubleshooting and it was warranted so I sent it
back for replacement which eventually got me a new phone.

But... during that waiting for the new phone process there was an
emergency trip required, so I bought a cheap tracfone and 30 d of
service for the trip. That phone was a ZTE Z233VL clamshell feature
type some unidentified v. of linux as its proprietary OS. Non-touchscreen.

During the trip, and considering how I used the phone (only for voice,
only receiving text, all only rarely) I actually preferred the
non-touchscreen clamshell 'ergonomically' over the touchscreen and
dimensions.

So, now on a trip I take the blu (for various things including ripped
music CDs and some wifi including googlevoice), the zte for voice and
receive text, a chromebook for wifi computing and airplane movies.

The tracfone plan costs me about $50/y as I need virtually no usage,
just service days. The blu doesn't cost anything beyond its purchase
and it is quite useful, as is the chromebook. My numerous landline
phones at home cost nothing because they are voip googlevoice.

--
Mike Easter

On 2020-05-04 10:42 a.m., nospam wrote:
In article , knuttle
wrote:

Can you explain the advantages of paying for a smartphone with text,
data and voice; and for old clamshell w/ a plan only for voice and
receiving text.
old clamshell I assume is something like the Samsung Guto line of phones

a smartphone is a computer that fits in your pocket, which can do a
wide variety of things not possible on a feature phone (or laptop for
that matter), it can access the internet at any time and normally has a
*much* better camera (and related apps) than what's available on a
feature phone.

a smartphone can also be used solely on wifi, without any cellular plan
at all.


You can even use it to make phone calls. :-)

Rene

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
You can even use it to make phone calls.Â* :-)

That is correct; wifi googlevoice.

And googlevoice has more features than many cellphone providers offer.

--
Mike Easter

In article , Mike Easter
wrote:

Rene Lamontagne wrote:
You can even use it to make phone calls.* :-)

That is correct; wifi googlevoice.

or any voip provider.

And googlevoice has more features than many cellphone providers offer.

and lacks others.

Ken Springer wrote:


What your your preferred distro be for non-techies and seniors?

Personally I liked the much maligned Ubuntu with the Unity desktop.
Contrary to all the bad press after the initial bugs were refined out it
was a very intuitive and clever modern interface that novices had no
trouble navigating, unlike MS's attempt with metro. I guess it was
because it is very similar to a phone interface. I was really hoping for
the Ubuntu phone to fly and escape Google and Android.

However, Canonical has dump it and is using the GNOME3 shell. Not bad,
but has some really annoying things. Like they broke the desktop as
being a desktop. You cannot drag or paste files or shortcuts temporarily
to the desktop breaking nearly 40 years of convention.(Someone on the
GNOME team must be one of those anal retentive that has nary a piece of
paper or stapler on their desk.) Anyway that may confound exWindows
users and normal folks workflow. I mean no one is advocating Windows 95
desktops with the Where's-Waldo icon packed desktops of hell! You know
what I am talking about...

But there are many other desktops environments you can use which is the
beauty of Linux over Windows or Mac. I'm going to see if the community
project that picked up Unity have their act together for 20.04, but many
folks like Ubuntu Mate or Mint which have a Windows-like DE out of the
box. The Xubuntu and Lubuntu are more sparse Windows 95 style DE that
are a bit too clumsy and reminds me too much of my 90-00 Linux desktops.
Too retro for my taste.

There's Zorin, Elementary, System76's Pop!_OS, and Manjaro which is not
Debian but Arch based. I prefer Debian. I used to used Redhat and
Mandrake, but after trying Ubuntu when it came out became a Debian fan
and much preferred their system configuration files layouts. And
Canonical (Ubuntu) has an extensive documention and helpful community
forums. Have you ever tried to get a "relevant" answer on a Windows forum?

Since almost all distros now come with LiveSession setups it is so easy
to download a iso, setup on a thumbdrive, plug into a computer and boot.
You can test it out without any harm. You can see if all your hardware
works out-of-the-box (and you will be surprised how it almost always
does), And you can test if you, or the senior in question, likes it and
finds it usable. If not try another distro...


Has anyone ever looked at the systems designed for seniors that are
based on Linux?




--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

Mike Easter wrote:
You are a more experienced administrator than I.

Maybe but there are a lot of help info out there. And with Linux if
there is something special you want your system to do there is someone
out there too and you can script something.


You 'administratively' planned and configured their usage.Â* The only
opportunity I had to administratively plan someone's usage was for the
guy who visited and who I provided a linux computer to and who did fine
here.

"'administratively' planned and configured their usage"? Not sure what
you mean there. Most distros now come with all the typical applications
normal users use installed by default upon setup. Distos have software
repositories with point and click GUI "Store" that is simple to install
software. Most can setup for updates to install automatically and since
updates in Linux include OS *and* apps it is done with one process, also
won't reboot on you in the middle of things giving you a bad day.


--
Take care,

Jonathan
-------------------
LITTLE WORKS STUDIO
http://www.LittleWorksStudio.com

On 5/4/2020 11:46 AM, Mike Easter wrote:

The tracfone plan costs me about $50/y as I need virtually no usage,
just service days.Â* The blu doesn't cost anything beyond its purchase
and it is quite useful, as is the chromebook.Â* My numerous landline
phones at home cost nothing because they are voip googlevoice.
I understand you are a collector ;-)


I Have a gusto Samsung phone for with I pay about $100, When have tried
to go to a smart phone it cost about $50 per month, I could not see
paying for two devices to make calls. We don't travel that much, where
I can not get access to WIFI for my computer.

Jonathan N. Little wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:
You are a more experienced administrator than I.

Maybe but there are a lot of help info out there. And with Linux if
there is something special you want your system to do there is someone
out there too and you can script something.

You 'administratively' planned and configured their usage.Â* The only
opportunity I had to administratively plan someone's usage was for the
guy who visited and who I provided a linux computer to and who did fine
here.

"'administratively' planned and configured their usage"? Not sure what
you mean there.

This:

Once setup, often setup with auto-updates, and for the
dementia-afflicted individuals their own non-admin profiles allowed
trouble free computing. Also rather that having to painstakingly walk
thought: "see this, go to the upper-right thingy, now click..., then
click..." I can just send them a cut-n-paste command string to fix it.

Also, I assume that you also initially configure your parents rig and
can also look in remotely.

But I agree that a command to get something done is much much more
efficient than a description of how to do it graphically.

When we are supporting or being supported in newsgroups, I think the
ideal solutions would be expressed in both command and graphical ways,
which graphical would of course be more wordy and complex.


--
Mike Easter

knuttle wrote:
Mike Easter wrote:

The tracfone plan costs me about $50/y as I need virtually no usage,
just service days.Â* The blu doesn't cost anything beyond its purchase
and it is quite useful, as is the chromebook.Â* My numerous landline
phones at home cost nothing because they are voip googlevoice.
I understand you are a collector ;-)


I Have a gusto Samsung phone for with I pay about $100,Â* When have tried
to go to a smart phone it cost about $50 per month,Â* I could not see
paying for two devices to make calls.Â* We don't travel that much, where
I can not get access to WIFI for my computer.

Speaking of economics;

.... over the years of old landlines, I've had quite a lot of telephone
numbers. But in recent years it had dwindled to basically 2 numbers at
home. At one time that was because I wanted to be able to send myself
fax, for mostly trivial reasons, but I was trying to fax w/ various
devices, a free standing fax machine, internal Win modems via linux and
windows both, and external serial modems with both.

But then having that 'other number' became very useful besides the silly
fax business. That number was one which only took voice messages, that
was never answered. It became the number I gave out whenever someone
needed a phone number for *anything* and I never gave out my number that
I actually answer personally.

The old copper was something ATT was wanting to get rid of supporting I
guess, because basic landline cost went to over $30/mo per line, so my
two line 'luxury' came to $60/mo which was more than my friends were
paying for their conversion to cellphones.

Now, w/ the combination of 'rearranging' things and VoIP, that $60/mo is
gone and I still have a home landline type number which I answer and I
still have a number which is answered 'by machine' only which can
receive voice or text except now none of that costs anything monthly.

I still play w/ fax sometimes but I'm able to experiment w/ using just
one line now, which is voip sending and receiving fax.


--
Mike Easter

In article , knuttle
wrote:

I Have a gusto Samsung phone for with I pay about $100, When have tried
to go to a smart phone it cost about $50 per month,

there are less expensive options.

I could not see
paying for two devices to make calls.

no need to keep both.

We don't travel that much, where
I can not get access to WIFI for my computer.

use the smartphone on wifi.