[spikeh]

Hi all,

My Dad's Windoze PC gives him nothing but hassle. He is 63, is Director of Operations for an International charity and he, like a lot of people from his generation, struggles with the basic concepts of day-to-day use (For instance, I will often receive a call at work saying that it's an "emergency" and that Word has "lost" all of his work).

Every 2-3 months I wind up doing a reformat of his HDD because even Windows Defender can't catch all the shit on the hard-drive. The PC is a relatively good spec (1.8GHZ AMD x, 512MB RAM, 100GB HDD) and he's only had it for a year or so. Anyway, long-story short: I'm essentially working my full-time day job and then technical support for him in the evenings, and it drives me nuts, so I told him I'd happily do any tech support for him if he would just switch to a Mac and save me from doing the dull stuff (virus / spyware checking, defragging, etc).

He is keen to get a Mac but isn't keen on spending big. He wants to replace his desktop with a Mini, but I'm tempted to try and persuade him to throw out his Toshiba notebook and get a low-end white MacBook. For the extra £300 or so he gets a good notebook which will run faster than the Mini.

Thoughts? Anyone here used the low-spec Mini before? I'm thinking if he does go for that one I'll get him to bump the RAM to 1GB...

Edit: Lord knows why I prefaced the topic with Re:. THIS ISN'T EMAIL, DOROTHY.

[Fahrenheit]

Right well, if you are saying his budget is say £750, I personally think he should have a look on eBay for a 17inch 1.83 Intel iMac -

http://search.ebay.co.uk/search/sear...tle=Intel+iMac

This would probably be my option, as he sounds like a guy who can get by on a PC.
The MacBook is certainly a good computer, but he is 63 (and so is 13.3 inches screen going to be a bit of a strain for all the time use)

Good luck on whatever choices he takes. As for using low-specs, I have an eMac 1.25 at the mo, which is still very fast in my eyes (wanna buy it? Its on eBay now )