My father needs a serious tech makeover. He is not old but simply seriously out of the loop when it comes to the technology of 2008 as opposed to 1998.
At one point he knew quite a bit about computers and how to use them for all the tasks he needed to do at work. Several years ago he retired and hasn’t updated his technology since. Now he wants to do things that all of his kids are doing but doesn’t have a system that can handle it and doesn’t really know how anyway.
The one technology he uses on a regular basis and relatively well is his digital camera. He loves taking pictures and is the one who documents all of our family events. From birthdays to camping trips to my recent wedding, he has tens of thousands of photos of his children and grandchildren. The problem is that the photos never get seen or shared in the way they should.
My father can’t do anything with the photos because of his antiquated computer. He is still working on the once rather-up-to-date, hand built-Pentium III desktop which my now-husband and I bought for him used when I was in college. His system is now comprised, the same as it was then, of the computer, a set of two very cheap speakers and a super-slow wired connection to the Internet with no printer or scanner. He has actually tried to by one in recent years to work with his system but the problem is most printers and scanners are too advanced and take up way too much energy to be used with this machine so he can’t print the photos out at home. A 9 year old machine doesn’t work with much made in the last two-three years.
Additionally, he can’t even download the pictures to the computer because of the lack of memory, let alone burn them onto CDs or upload them to the web to share with family members around the country. Instead, they sit on the SD card for months until a family member tries to help him get them off or he pays way more than he should to get the photos printed, taken off of the SD card and burned onto CDs which he sends to all of us in the mail. He has no way to adjust light or crop them because all he had on that old computer was a photo viewing software anyway. And after they are printed and put on CDs, nothing is happening with them. They join the growing stack of CDs or photos next to the computer, gathering dust because there is no decent system of organization. Even when my father wants to find a photo he knows he took, he can’t because he has to search all of the individual CDs to find the one he thinks the photo is on and then when he does it takes forever to open on his computer to even see if it is indeed the right one.
I would like to see him have an up to date computer with a CD/DVD burner, photo manipulation software, and an attached all-in-one card reader, scanner and printer system for his photos. I would also like to see him with a wireless router and decent speed Internet connection. Lastly, I would like to see him get some training on using his machine and on how to use the photo manipulation software to adjust and crop photos and on photo management systems on the computer and on the Internet.
If possible, getting him a digital video camera and/or some training on how to make some movies with music or recorded speech over the digital photo slide show would be great as well and I am sure he would enjoy it. If he had these things, I think he would finally be able to really enjoy all of the photos he has and share his love of his new hobby, photography, with everyone around him.
