Teaching tech skills

I am trying to help my mom be more tech independent, because right now partner and I are her tech support and when we move it would be nice if we weren't. (Or just emergency tech support.)

Yesterday we worked on "how to post photos to Facebook and Craigslist," which was a subset of "transferring files from your email to the computer.

It was then that I learned that she (a) never opens her computer's file browser system; (b) saves most of her files in the Downloads folder; (c) all of the "it's like a filing system" explanations over the years have never sunk in and my mom does not understand how to save a file and find it later, or transfer it between one space and another. This may also explain why she can't find old emails I send her and is always asking me to resend them.

She also tends to memorize tasks in a linear manner, like if she is already browsing the internet and you tell her to open her email, she closes the browser, opens Firefox, then goes to the email tab.

I have tried sending her WikiHows on posting photos, etc, but I think part of the issue is that they are not basic enough for her.

Also complicating things is that she is using a 10 year old Linux tower partner and I built, and my dad does *not* do anything but Windows. So when we leave she is going to have to (a) find someone to port her data to a ~new computer~ and decide on an OS; (b) find someone to maintain a Linux system with files saved god knows where.

Does anyone have advice for an external source where I can send my mom to learn super basic computer skills like "how to find things in your email" or "how does saving and finding your files work"? (Complicated somewhat because she's not in a Windows environment and she has trouble translating skills from one platform to another; this is an issue whenever she gets a new phone as well.)

(And yes I know it is technically not my problem, but it will be easier for it to be not my problem if I can refer her to another way to solve the problems she is having.)

Recs? Tablet with good camera + basic web stuff, affordable

Hi,

I switched from a smartphone to a tablet/flip-phone set-up last year and have overall been very happy with it.

My one issue is that the tablet I have (an ASUS...something something that runs Droid) has a really shitty camera. For example, if I take photos in good lighting of both of my cats together the camera does not know how to adjust the white balance so one of my cats looks like some sort of alien/ghost making a spectral appearance in the shot. Or everything is hella blurry.

Let us not speak of the video.

This is part of why there have been fewer yarn photos and cat photos overall lately. When I *do* want to take photos, I have been tracking down my partner (who is using my old iPhone 4S -- sans 3G service -- as a tablet) and using the camera on that. I do have a digital camera, but it is sadly to the point where photos from it just look pixelated and weird now.

The plan is to update my tablet about every year anyway (while it still has some trade-in value). I know that the Droid/Apple divide is basically "pick which proprietary system you would prefer to work with!" and if necessary, I could just get a refurbished iPhone 5c or something and use that. However, I have grown used to Droid keyboard controls and would prefer not to keep switching back and forth ad nauseum. Also, Droid is more likely to play nicely with my Linux machine, should I need it to. (I don't have a machine that runs iTunes to sync an iThing with, should I want to back it up.)

Here are the kinds of things I need my tablet to do (besides take photos):

• calendar, email, web-browsing, google drive document thingies
• Netflix and Pandora integration
• take decent photographs, plays nicely with Flickr and Youtube uploaders
• some sort of note-taking app would be nice (droid does suck with this)
• be physically light enough that I don't want to murder someone
• It would be good to get some sort of stand for the new tablet since I seem to read/watch laying down a fair bit
• affordable ($200 or less, this is probably a Christmas + "hey I did a trade in" kind of thing)
• storage space for photos or if I want to save things like maps/bus schedules/knitting patterns offline

Anyone have suggestions or ideas?