Mom's Computer!

My Mom is a fairly computer literate... um... senior citizen. (Let's put it this way, I got my invitation to join AARP more than 5 years ago.) I don't recollect when she got her current desktop. I built one for her maybe ten years ago and loaded OS/2 on it! She's long ago returned to Windows but I don't know whether she's gotten a new computer since then.

It doesn't really matter; the point is that she's long past due for an upgrade. And, she's letting me build and customize it! Whoopee! This is going to be so much fun.

Mom has some interesting requirements -- or, perhaps, lack thereof. For one thing, she's deaf. I don't mean she's hard of hearing, I mean DEAF. She, like all deaf people, is sensitive to vibrations, but sound isn't an issue for her. She also isn't a gamer. (Is any parent of a 50-something a gamer?) Interestingly, however, she does have somewhat significant graphics requirements. You see, the advent of PCs, and the viral growth of the internet, has been a boon to the deaf community.

In the bad old days, say prior to the '80s, telephones -- invented by Alexander Graham Bell in an effort to help deaf people -- were useless to the deaf. Sometime in the late '70s, however, technology based on the old teletype machine (how many of you all even know what a teletype is?) became available to the deaf community. Known as TTYs or TDDs, these early devices were big, clunky affairs. They were also expensive and slow. Nevertheless, among the deaf, they were hugely popular; finally giving them personal long-distance telecommunications capabilities approximating (though poorly) that available to the hearing.

This same period, the last quarter of the 20th century, saw the exponential development of consumer electronics, the wide-spread use of personal computers, and this thing called the Internet. For deafies, this meant, first, a drastic reduction in size, and an increase in the quality and capabilities of TTYs. (Mom's first couple of TTYs couldn't keep up with my typing at about 60 wpm.) But, the internet! The internet ushered in a whole new world for the deaf.

Many technically inclined deaf people acquired PCs, just like everyone else did, in the early 80s. But, BBS and the nascent email technology weren't much of an improvement over the TTY. It was the advent of IM that really opened up the world for deaf folks. Of course, instant communications with friends and family (along with lower phone bills!) attracted them but, more than that, the rest of the world (or our part of it, at any rate) also used IM. For the first time ever, deaf people on the internet could communicate with hearing folks as easily as they communicated among themselves. And, then, along came web-cams, cheap video conferencing, and all the other means of quick and reliable communications. Imagine the impact on deaf people. Whereas the TTY give them, for the first time, something approaching the ease and convenience of the telephone, the web-cam gave them the freedom to communicate their way; face-to-face, hand gestures, facial expressions, and body language -- the whole nine yards.

So, back to Mom's computer (thought I'd forgotten about that, didn't you). As stated, she's not a gamer but she'll still need good graphics capability. I think something using either the Radeon 2600XT or the Nvidia 8600GTS. A sound card, of course, is irrelevant to Mom. On the other hand, my daughter now lives with her and might appreciate a little music and game sounds. So, either decent mobo sound or a modestly capable sound card. Two gigs of DDR2 RAM, of course, unless DDR3 comes down in price and latency timing. For storage, I'm thinking a pair of SATA harddrives; although, I'm not sure whether to configure them in a RAID or leave them as a pair. Optical will consist of a DVD/RW, for sure. Depending on price, and whether she wants a new monitor, I might also include a BluRay or HD-DVD.

I have no thoughts on the case. Mom and I talked about a couple of themes for customization but we also talked about a clear plexi case. I'll have to do some shopping, and some thinking about customization, before deciding where to go with the case.

That leaves the two critical components: the CPU and the mobo (Mom, that means mother board -- the thing that everything else plugs into, one way or another). Based mostly on price, I've narrowed my CPU choices down to either a quad-core Q6600, or a dual core E6850. The two chips cost cost the same and, from the few reports I've seen, seem on a par in capability. I'm leaning toward the Q6600 though, because I think ever more apps will be written with quad-core processors in mind. Thus, gazing into my thoroughly cracked lead ball, I think the quad will hold its own longer than the E6850. I'll do more research, however, before deciding.

I'm also in the wind about the mobo. The P35 just plain bothers me. I don't understand the attraction for a motherboard that supports only 22 PCIe lines. One decent graphics card and there goes the neighborhood! (If someone cares to enlighten me, I'm all ears.) On the other hand, Mom's PC only needs the one PCIe 16 slot. For my druthers, I'd think a lot about the 975 mobos. They are getting long in the tooth, however, and Intel is supposedly coming out with a replacement Real Soon Now. Another research area.

Well, that's it for now. Next step is more research, followed by shopping and coming up with a customization plan.

I'll keep you all posted.