[rlmorel]

Free is great, but it still has a way to go to pass the granny test.

Computers are STILL too hard to use, for the most part. They need to function more like appliances such as a toaster rather than exotic boxes with levers, wheels and dials.

[Eyes Unclouded]

Linux is free so long as your time is worthless.

Although development and research are not a problem I don’t see the unsavvy in this country adopting Linux. People who open .exe from their inbox are not gonna wrap their head around the command line interface, ever.

[SteveMcKing]

They need to function more like appliances such as a toaster rather than exotic boxes with levers, wheels and dials.

There is definitely a lack of senior and "idiot-friendly" computers.

However let's not turn our computers into PPV/On-Demand/WebTV boxes. Sure companies would love that - dumbing it all down for strict control over access and content.

Then there are those who think MySpace and Blogger are the height of web design... computing for cool people, without all the difficult learning required of actual web developers.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

Computers are STILL too hard to use, for the most part. They need to function more like appliances such as a toaster rather than exotic boxes with levers, wheels and dials.

Disagree - strongly. Remove the flexibility and programmability from a computer and you end up with stuff like the iPhone - dream devices for corporations to maintain iron control over what we do with what we buy. We'll get a certain amount of strictly controlled, dumbed-down features - web browsing, email, heavily DRMed media content, audio and video communications. And we'll get nice, fat bills for these services. Forget about running your own applications, forget about open-source or 3rd party innovation. No thanks.

[N3WBI3]

Free is great, but it still has a way to go to pass the granny test.

It all depends on what granny is doing, if granny owns an iPod and watches DVD's on her PC then you're right Linux is probably not acceptable. If Granny posts on web forums and sends email to her kids than a preloaded Linux box from Dell will work just fine for her..

[dfwgator]

Once companies start selling Linux pre-installed and ready to go out of the box, it will start passing the “granny test.”

[Señor Zorro]

They need to function more like appliances such as a toaster rather than exotic boxes with levers, wheels and dials.

The only way you will ever accomplish this is to break the computer's usefulness. What does a toaster do? A toaster toasts toast. It toasts toast to several different levels and that's about it. A computer computes, but what it computes, by definition, varies from user to user, and, therefore, needs the capability to be customizable.

With the power to customize comes the complexity. Making a computer like an appliance would be like making a calculator that only adds 2 + 2: it would be worthless for almost everyone. Or imagine a calculator that has one button for each problem it can solve. It would be childishly simple to use. To keep the calculator half-way usable, you would have to limit the number of problems and thereby hamstring its usefulness.

[amchugh]

Is there any OS that passes the granny test? Windows sure as hell doesn’t (at least not with my granny). I want a thin client or a virtual machine for my grandmom. Maybe OSX, although I suspect she could screw that up too.