You know what? We need a service.
Over at BoingBoing there's an article that describes generations > W as "the Tech Support Generations", since inevitably we travel home for the holidays with two things; gifts and updates. Three if we're just out of college or our washing-machine went on the fritz again.
Naturally the original Slashdot thread is full of "Dude! U R So l4me if u do not install Linuxor on your parents computer!", so i'll skip the general fault in that particular logic-thread*
Instead, i'll offer the following list of updates (These are direct links to the software):
- IE6 SP1 (80MB)
- Windows XP service pack 2 (272 MB)
- Activate Automatic Updates (have the software download and install automatically)
Non Microsoft Stuff:
- Firefox 1.0 Set as default, show them their new browser. Let them learn to love it. Be sure to also install:
- Macromedia's players
- Quicktime DO NOT INSTALL THE iTUNES BLOAT! and make sure quicktime isn't being greedy about what it shows.
Realplayer (the free version, yes, they still have that).- The BBC Annoyance Free Real Player 8 (Thanks Andrew!)
- Of course, you may also want to install the Yahoo Mozilla Search Plugins i built, but that's your choice
- One of the only reasons i can think of to even have MS IE on your system, is because of the Companion toolbar, specifically the anti-spyware tool. Unfortunately, there's no way to automate when that is run so it's up to you to remember to do it. Lavasoft has gone to a pay model for ad-aware so the number of free spyware detectors is dwinding greatly. (i suppose you could add %PROGRAMFILES%Yahoo!YPSRypsr.exe to your parent's schedualed task list but you'd have to script the "Check for Updates" and "Begin Scan" buttons)
- Avast Anti-virus
- Zone Alarm
But dang it, we need someone somewhere to help us out. We need someone to create a bittorrent of these updates so the week or so before we have to get on the plane back wherever, we can just burn a couple of CDs of updates and let'em run on their system. Plus, it would contain updates for stuff i inevitably forgot to add.
That would be cool.
[* Both my parents and my parents-in-law expect the computer to be Windows. It's what they bought. If i were to install a copy of Linux and even configure it exactly to look exactly the same as Windows, two things would happen. 1) They'd yell at me for "throwing away a perfectly good thing they spent good money on" and 2) breaking their computer when they couldn't simply install random new gizmo by plugging it in. Since i live 3,000+ miles away, it's far easier to not argue.]
