I had another occasion to help a resident with her computing problems. She said her 7-8 YO Toshiba laptop was crashing & she decided to buy an iPad. She had the laptop at the tech store getting her files transferred to the iPad. Not sure how much that cost her. I then asked her what she was going to do with the laptop. Chuck it was the answer, so in my interest to salvage usable hardware I asked if I could have it for the day, not keep it but give me a chance to install a Linux system. No problem. Next day she called saying she had it & would bring it over.
When I got it I booted up without connecting to my network, just to find out what OS she was using, MS Vista! Rebooted, installed LinuxMint, completely installed & configured it within an hour to hour & half. Called her back, asked her to come over & get a little training. She was impressed how easy it was to operate, jotted down notes & passwords, seemed satisfied. Then she informed me she was disappointed with her iPad, couldn't connect to internet & didn't have a clue what she was doing. I volunteered to go over & get her laptop & iPad working.
She had a dog-eared notebook with her notes and pages of passwords, finding the correct one for her router was a hoot. Finally with a little persistence I discovered the correct one. I connected & tested her laptop, her wireless printer & had her try several things to her satisfaction. Then I tackled the iPad, found out it was a simple step to connect to the router, with the same elusive password. No one had showed her anything about it, she was going to call her niece several states away for instructions. She was like a kid at Xmas when I showed her that you can turn the iPad & view it in landscape or otherwise, again no one showed her. I exited while she was happy tapping away.
Later she stopped at my house & much to my embarrassment, gave me a hug & a gift certificate to dinner for my help. She called later, thanking me again, she had been using her laptop to email everyone she knew with news & new found tech abilities.
When she had first told me about her purchase another member (*) was listening, then telling me she had a computer problem & had called MS support, they had remoted in fixed the issue then sold her a maintenance contract for $179. I didn't get all the details & don't know whether it was a one time price, annual or what. She said she needed the computer immediately, she thought of me but knew I had indicated my misgivings about Win 10 & didn't want to bother me.
(*) One of the issues I could see looming, the maintenance contract would be worthless if future MS support is not provided to users who do not have the 'Skylake' microarchitecture installed that was launched by Intel in July '15. I know the desktop she upgraded with Win 10 is at least 4-5 years old & unless she upgrades her paid up fees will be money down the drain.
