Susie Wyshak's Hub

Getting started with the AspireOne “just worked.” After going through a quick wizard it was ready to go. And the AspireOne’s keyboard has a delightfully light touch with sort of yummy feeling keys.

Now for the meat…setting up this new Windows 7 netbook in a way that will make sure my “novice end user” can be up and running without any training. My goals are:

1) enable “safe surfing”

2) Make sure “the user” isn’t calling me every 5 minutes for tech support

3) That email and all the usual websites he uses are totally accessible

Here’s what I did:

1) Downloaded Google chrome. After starting to configure Internet Explorer and set home page tabs, I decided to check out the latest version of Chrome to see how it was — and especially to compare the “zoom” features of both browsers since with this small screen readability of web pages is especially important.

Oh, I feel guilty that I didn’t download Firefox but I wanted to keep the browser UI as minimal as possible on this small screen.

Update: I decided to download Firefox as a backup for that day when he encounters a website that does not work on Chrome…this after reading that Ameritrade’s browser compatibility statement: Compatible with IE 3-6. Cannot even imagine the security flaws in IE3 3!

2) Compare Yahoo Finance (which he’s used to) to Google finance.

Checking portfolios and quotes is the primary activity.

Interestingly while Yahoo had a lot more ads and so much text it was almost difficult to get to the meat, Google Finance was of course much cleaner — but it requires horizontal scrolling much to my shock,  to get all the daily quote data on stocks. That right there is nearly a deal killer (meaning it would result in a tech support call to me no doubt)

Pick the email method. He’s used to Yahoo Mail and I remembered I’d set up a Gmail account for him a couple of years ago. Much to my delight the Gmail account was full of old Jott messages I’d sent to him a couple of years ago. While the benefit of logging him into Google and having his portfolio as a tab along with Gmail so he can avoid logging into multiple services is great I truly have a feeling he could not get the hang of Gmail’s threaded messages…ok I’m speaking from my own experience.

Next step is to consider a mail client that will automatically download his mail. I mean, realistically that’s the best solution.

3) Download Skype – Here my only fear is when he can make free calls at will he’ll be calling me all day. But there are worse fears and with the Aspire’s built in webcam, which I purposely had on the feature list so he could see his grandchildren from afar, Skype will definitely come in handy. Yes there’s Gtalk but we’ll start with Skype.

4) Security Software – I’m slightly disappointed that the Aspire has the usually array of security software trial versions. Since he’s familiar with the Zone Alarm suite that’s what I’ll start him out with.

5) Skin the browsers – This process made me wish there was a theme called “visually impaired.” Or “highly accessible.” He isn’t totally visually impaired and a theme with large dark text on a light background would do the trick.

6) Download some photos to set up as a screensaver and keep him logged into the photo account on which we share with him.

7) Pandora - Set up some of his favorite music.

YouTube – bookmarked a few sites he’d like to surf. [That is downright hilarious that WordPress  rendered my number 8 as a smiley... ]

9) Hulu – Bookmarked some shows

10) Instant Netflix – Set up an Instant Netflix queue and bookmarked it with saved login.

11) Install Flash – Chrome required a Flash download which is always good to get out of the way. Guessing I will need to download Acrobat as well…but maybe not!

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