[Long Cut]

Any help would be appreciated. Also, what do you tell someone about the 'net and computers who has never used one in his life?

[Long Cut]

Ping! Any of you guys got any advice? Ping someone who might, if not.

[Long Cut]

Ping. Any advice, or know someone who does?

[Fzob]

My 2 cents

Reformat and install something other than Window 98. That way you get rid of all the personal stuff and you get a OS that doesn't crash whenever it feels like it.

[Soaring Feather]

Hi LC. Well, the first thing to tell your dad is this, the computer understands two things, off and on. LOL

My brother was given an older computer for Christmas. He, too, like your Dad had never turned one on. His daughter set everything up for him including Yahoo IM. He learned to do that very quickly.
As someone suggested perhaps a new version of Windows would be best.


Can't say anymore, because I'm a iMac user.

[Biblical Calvinist]

I agree; simply move your stuff off of the hard drive; then get a copy of Windows 2000 Pro; and do a clean install OVER Windows 98; that way; no formating is needed; and everything will be good as new.

Win2k Pro IS the most stable OS available out there; I like it even better than WinXP. No more Blue Screens of Death (that is, No Crashes.)

After that; you just show your your father the basics of how the IE browser works; point him to Free Republic.. and he'll never be bored again!

[JoJo Gunn]

Assuming you have the Gateway recovery CD, you can choose to do a full wipe and reinstall. Don't simply do a reinstall of Windows, because it's a house of cards, as a friend of mine found out while trying to reinstall his AV (Norton).

Start off with a fresh install of Windows, get a firewall and an AV, don't start adding a lot of programs he might not ever use, and I predict it'll be good enough.

Contrary to what some say, '98 is far from dead or useless.

[GovernmentShrinker]

I bought my now 82 year old father his first computer for his 79th birthday. Overall, it's gone well, though I still get about a dozen phone calls a week from him asking how to do this or that :-) If you can possibly afford it, I'd recommend getting him an up-to-date computer, or at least upgrading to a newer version of Windows. Older computers and/or operating systems are increasingly unable to deal with contemporary Internet-based things, and old geezers just starting out in the computer world are not well-equipped to work around these issues.

First and foremost, make you get your dad set up with a subscription to a top notch virus scanning system that does its updates and scans automatically, and make sure the compuer and operating system are equilled to take advantage of this function. Trust me, it will be a LONG time before your dad figures how to deal with a pop-up that says "An update for McAfee is available; do you want to install now?"

As for getting your dad started, pick something he is especially interested in -- stock-watching, religion, conspiracy theories, whatever -- and then set up a few related sites on his "Favorites" list, and show him how to access them that way. If he's like my dad, his interest in the subject (in my dad's case, stocks and bonds) will push him to try clicking around the sites even though he doesn't really know how it all works, and gradually he'll get the hang of thing. After a couple of years of checking stock prices online, my dad bumped into ads telling him how cheaply he could make trades online, even using the same broker he uses now. Being a Great Depression-survivor who's never fully recovered, that convinced dad that he simply MUST learn how to make trades online. He still isn't there, but he keeps working on it -- calling up the broker, and me, asking "I'm on the screen that says ____, what do I do next?"