We live in a very technical world now a days so I don’t know why it surprises me that my parents are slowly embracing modern tools. I am less surprised by my dad than my mom but it sometimes still takes getting used to.
My dad at least has a long history of having useful gadgets. He was the first person I remember to have a PDA. It was an old Sharp Wizard that I eventually inherited. I get my love of gadgets from him, but I think I take it to a whole new level. Of course there is alot cooler stuff out now.
My mom on the other hand is not tech savvy at all. I still get calls from my mom for help doing basic stuff on my dad’s GPS. Of course my sister who once programed for a living also calls me just as frequently about similar issues so I shouldn’t judge.
What is funny recently is that my dad had been dead against a smart phone for ages. At one point I got him a Treo 300 that he used for a year or so, but didn’t like the small keyboard. He ended up going back to a regular phone and an old style Palm handheld. He has had a palm handheld (minus the time with the Treo when it was Handspring) since they first came out in 1996. Recently, well actually over the past few years he has been asking about an all in one phone/PDA. The problem is he doesn’t like the little keyboards. Because of that he hasn’t switched his setup, but has really wanted to ditch his phone, PDA, and pager (yeah he still has one) for one device. His work was going to give him a Blackberry a while ago but he turned it down because again he didn’t want a keyboard. I showed him the iphone when I got it and we decided it wasn’t for him since he would have a problem with the lack of feedback on the virtual keyboard. Recently he has been wanting a new phone again, so he went to the Verizon Store (his carrier). I was surpassed when he came back and said he wanted a Blackberry Storm. He liked the feedback of the virtual keyboard, and the phone did everything else he needed. He even wanted to get the data plan to get work email. He spent about an hour with sales guy and ended up buying one. I now need to go over and migrate his palm data to the Blackberry. In some ways I am not surprised he got that phone and in others I am a bit surprised he has a phone as advanced (arguably) as the one I have!
My mom also surprised me with technology when she started asking me about the Amazon Kindle. Apparently Operah had a special about it and she was interested. My sisters mother in law gave my sister a Kindle and my sister lent it to my mom for a cruise she went on a few months ago. She really liked it since she didn’t have to pack a bunch of books. She took a while to get over some issues with it but apparently got the hang of it. For a while I was pondering upgrading to the Kindle 2 and she asked if she could have my old one if I did. At first I wasn’t going to upgrade. For me the price of the Kindle 2 was too much to be worth the upgrade from the first version. My mom’s birthday is coming up and I couldn’t figure out what to get her (and I still owe her a mothers day gift) so I asked if she wanted my Kindle for her birthday gift? She said yes, so I ordered a Kindle 2 for myself. The new one would be a waste for her, so I don’t feel so bad giving her the generation 1 version. I am excited for the new Kindle and hopeful my mom doesn’t run into any problems using the Kindle the next time she uses it.
In a later post I might write about part two of this post, about my progress at weaning both my mom and dad off AOL. They still use it for email. I setup a mail domain on Google Apps and created accounts for both of them. I just need to show them how to use the Gmail web interface and get them to tell people the new addresses.