“Almost 30″ Johnson at BoingBoing Gadgets has a nice post about convincing his dad to buy an iMac.
(He’s one of those guys who can repair a tube-based amp without schematics, but only figured out that you could minimize an application window without losing all the data last year.)
I finally cajoled him into getting an iMac, primarily because I was tired of trying to troubleshoot his problems over the phone. I figured a Mac would be less prone to strange cruft and crashes in the first place and easier to use overall once he got over the initial operating system shock. And so far so good, although I think he’s just as impressed by the iMac’s looks as he is its performance.
I think I sometimes take for granted just how computer savvy my parents are. I get a decent amount of support calls from my dad for his office computers, but it’s all pretty understandable. My mom (as far as I know) sticks to the basics (email and shopping) and has pretty much honed those particular skills.