tablets for parents

[Ben Evans]

It would mean putting in fixed infrastructure, but modern smart TVs are
capable of doing Skype.

My parents have a Panasonic Smart Viera connected to a standard BT
broadband line. It does Skype perfectly fine - in fact provides a much
better video conferencing experience than basically anything else short of
the $100k dedicated infra I've seen in banks.

A smart TV combined with a Freeview box and the catchup services available
on the Smart TV basically do everything my parents want apart from video
games.

YMMV, of course.

Ben


On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 9:20 PM, Nicholas Clark <nick at ccl4.org> wrote:

> Dear knowledgeable hive mind,
>
> It seems that my parents are finally cracking and amenable to the idea of
> buying a device for the purpose of videoconferencing. My sister and I
> suspect that the right thing is a tablet connected via 3G
>
> (my parents alternate between two locations in southern England, so fixed
> line would mean 2 fixed lines, and two lots of fixed infrastructure, which
> feels like a pain)
>
> So, what is good to get. Specifically
>
> 1) What tablet?
>    (with camera, obviously, 3G, and possibly not much else "special")
> 2) What data plan?
>
> You can infer from this that they don't currently have an Internet
> connection, and I don't think that once they get one they are going to
> start
> heavy surfing or high bandwidth activities such as watching videos on
> YouTube or iPlayer.
>
> (They have had the "recording the TV" thing sussed for a decade or more
> now,
> and whilst they have migrated from VHS to hard drives, I don't think that
> they are going to move from the idea of a box under the TV connected to an
> aerial, that they program after circling programmes in a paper listings
> magazine)
>
> I don't think that they care what OS, and I don't think that I do hugely
> either. I just that care it doesn't get abandoned by the manufacturer as
> soon as the next model comes out*, and it needs to work without assuming
> that the owner has a PC for any sort of regular service activity.
>
> My sister has Macs (and a Blackberry too, I think), but is dealing with
> Windows at work, so between us I think we can hand-hold most things.
>
> Nicholas Clark
>
> * So *this* would put me off Windows RT even if it ticked all the other
> boxes,
>   as I can't see how MS are going to sanely sustain 3 different OSes and
>   ecosystems, and I suspect that RT is more than 33% likely to be the one
> for
>   the chop. And even if it isn't, well, Windows Mobile, Windows Phone 7,
>   Windows Phone 8 - they have a pedigree now of dumping their customers.
>