My stepmother is in her 70s and doing very well learning how to use an old computer running Windows Me. She has a computer expert who calls when needed, and charges £35 an hour to sort out problems. It took him two hours to install a firewall and hence cost £70. That sounds like too much to me. Martin Whittle
It does sound too much, but home visits are expensive and technicians also have to cover the cost of travel. Some of the people who do this sort of thing work through Low Cost Computer Help (lowcostcomputerhelp.co.uk), which has a fixed charge of £59.95, so even taking that route would only have saved £10.
I suspect it would be more cost-efficient to upgrade your stepmother to a new or refurbished system running Windows XP SP2 or Vista. These are more reliable, more secure and can be maintained remotely using the built-in Remote Assistance feature.
Indeed, unless she needs to run games or some Windows-only software, consider upgrading her to a secondhand Apple iBook with an external mouse. This avoids Windows malware problems, is less susceptible to crashes due to "pilot error" and is dramatically more secure than Windows Me.
You can probably work out how soon a new system would pay for itself in reduced support costs.
