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Follow on Google News | Nerds On Call: Best Mother's Day GiftsGive mom the Gift of your time - Help Her to Get Comfortable with New Tech
By: Nerds On Call Computer Repair Sacramento Be Her Personal Shopper: Mom wants a new laptop. Instead of sending her off to the store on her own, tag along to help her pick out the one that’s right for her. You know Mom doesn’t need a gigantic hard drive and upgraded video card, but she’ll enjoy the faster boot up time of a solid state hard drive and lots of RAM. It may even make sense to consider a touch screen or tablet if she won’t be using it for work of a lot of typing. Show Her How: Don’t just send her home with a box and a kiss. Plan to spend a few hours helping her to get it set up and get familiar with her new equipment. Start her off with the basics while you’re there, and then leave her with teaching tools such as Help pages and Tutorial Videos. Both Microsoft and Apple have them so bookmark links and show her how to navigate to them. Give Her Tech Support: If Mom sprung for a Mac or iOS device, Apple has a support community she can join to pose questions to the community (questions are often answered by repair or tech support professionals) Remote support is a lifesaver in those times when you just can't figure out why your printer isn't printing. Many computer repair (http://www.callnerds.com/ "Send your parents a Tech Support care package" by Google (www.teachparentstech.org) Another idea for a really personal touch is to make your own tutorials that Mom can refer back to whenever she needs them, for specific issues you know she's been having. Most people are visual learners so video is an optimal format. Start a YouTube channel with all your how-to videos and share the link with Mom. You can also write out the step-by-step details for tasks she needs to perform. Make sure your instructions describe the task visually: "left-click on the Windows icon in the lower left-hand corner of your screen" rather than "click on the Start Menu," as Mom might not know what the "Start Menu" is. Give Her the Facebook Experience: Most Moms these days love to see your Facebook status updates about the grandkids or your latest vacation pictures. Make sure Mom is getting the full experience. If she's not on Facebook yet, help her create an account, post a nice profile picture, customize her privacy settings and send out preliminary friend requests to connect with family and friends. Even established Facebook users may appreciate a tutorial. Have mom write down all the questions she has about her computer, email, and Facebook over the course of a week. Then sit down and walk her through them. She will love it! If Mom hasn't gotten on the computer bandwagon yet (and you're pretty sure she's not ready), maybe she shouldn't. There are plenty of devices that fill in quite nicely for a computer, like an iPad or Kindle Fire. They’re intuitive and much less complicated and can probably do just about everything she'd need a computer to do. There are even external keyboards available if she doesn't like typing on the touch screen. Before you hand Mom some new tech bling, just make sure it comes with a bit of set up time from you. Andrea Eldridge is CEO and co-founder of Nerds On Call, an on-site computer and laptop repair service (http://www.callnerds.com/ About Nerds On Call Established in a spare room in Redding, Calif., in March 2004, Nerds On Call offers on-site computer and laptop repair services (http://www.callnerds.com/) End
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