HomeFront is so needed..

[John Fields]

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/15/10/19/005242/ask-slashdot-good-subscription-based-solution-for-pc-tech-support

My parents are getting close to the their 70s and neither one of them is particularly tech savvy. Since my teenage years I have been tech support for the family, but now that I am older I can not be at their beck and call every time they inadvertently download something they should not, or the printer stops working. Given the amount of time that I have worked with them I don't feel that it is realistic that I will be able to convey the information they need to become self-sufficient. What I am looking for is a service that will be able to assist with any software PC related issues, viruses, printers and the like. Currently they are using a tech firm out of India (iYogi) that does unlimited support for a few hundred per year per machine -- which is fine, though they are big on the up-sell. They tend to push their own virus protection software, and attempted to sell my Dad, who has 500Mb of documents, a 3Tb external hard drive because they said he needed it. Currently the computers they use are ones I have built. Maybe the best solution would be store-bought PCs that offer additional tech support at a price. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

And there are already a bunch of (vociferous) responses... Summed up:

• Ditch PCs and go tablet.
  
• Ditch PCs and go Chromebook
  
• Ditch Windows and Go Mac
  
• Ditch PC and go Ubuntu
  
• Go Local computer shop (only do annual contracts to avoid upsell treadmill)
  
• Go local computer GUY (retired)
  
• keep doing it yourself.
  

Worth a (long meandering) night read to see into the problem space the HomeFront Router is targeted at!

That said I will point out that tablets, et. al, while simpler than a full blown PC OS are only more reliable HARDWARE.  Mac hardware in general is pretty good too but everything fails, it's the law of physics.  The real problem I see is pebkac and switching to a tablet isn't a fix for that, and worse it makes remote control impossible to see what they are having issues with.  Same goes for Chromebooks until they will allow real remote access (it is against their security model).  I still think we are on the right track owning the network..

JF