Easy Does It: We Review The World's Most User-Friendly PCs

Posted 10/24/2011 at 2:07pm | by Gordon Mah Ung

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How to set up the computer-phobe in your life with trouble-free computing

Are you ready for that 3 a.m. phone call?

No, not the call from JSOC hoping to get approval to chopper in DEVGRU to take out a Tier 1 operative (what that means even we don't know). What we’re talking about is that 3 a.m. call from your sobbing parent, sibling, or acquaintance desperately asking for your help with a computer.

It. Gets. Old.

Let’s admit it, for those computer-phobes, a personal computer with a fully featured and robust operating system isn’t right for either them or you. As wonderful as a PC with a real operating system is, there’s maintenance to be done, patches and drivers to be installed, and enough dials, knobs, and gauges that a computer-phobic cyberklutz can really bork things up faster than you can say right-click.

But in a world where not having access to email, Facebook, and the Internet puts you as far off the grid as the Unabomber, is there a way for these folks to have an easy, trouble-free computing lifestyle?

To find out, we looked at three machines—the Telikin Touch, the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook, and Apple's iPad 2—that just might be idiot-proof enough to keep even a complete computer-dufus from screwing things up.

Telikin Touch

It feels a bit like a computer kiosk, but that's for your protection

The Telikin is billed as “quite possibly the world’s easiest computer.” And we can see why. Originally aimed at non-tech-savvy elderly folk who want a computing experience without having to dial-a-nerd every day, the Telikin offers a custom-designed OS to do just a few things, but do them easily.

The Telikin Touch itself is an off-the-shelf, 18-inch MSI all-in-one with a dual-core Atom, a 320GB hard drive, 2GB of RAM, and Wi-Fi. The Telikin’s performance isn’t horribly slow, but it’s certainly not as responsive as the other two devices we're reviewing here and can lag on occasion. The Telikin’s main selling point is its ease of use and senior-friendliness. The unit comes with a USB keyboard sporting very large letters, and there is an option for a keyboard with even larger letters. The OS itself is a variant of Linux that’s been tweaked to display big, friendly buttons on one side for email, browsing, and games.

The buttons are large enough that the screen’s touch capability works surprisingly well. The touch screen doesn’t support flick-based scrolling, but the big buttons and a UI that’s never hidden ensure that the newb can’t get lost.

The Telikin supports Skype, Facebook, and POP- and IMAP-based email systems. We did hit a snag here: We let the Telikin configure our Hotmail account, but it biffed on the outgoing mail port. We corrected it easily, but this would leave a computer-newb stumped for months. The iPad 2 got this right, while the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook didn’t have native client support for Hotmail.

The Telikin Touch features a touch screen and a custom Linux UI and is built with seniors in mind.

Another big fail for the Telikin came soon after our first boot: a LibreOffice fatal error and occasional hard locks. The error message itself is enough to send a computer-phobe cowering in a closet, but the hard locks? Inexcusable. We thought it was all over for the Telikin but a call to the company resulted in a tech logging into the machine remotely and applying a quick patch. From that point on, the error messages and lockups went away. We almost wondered if the company planned this as a way to showcase its tech support—but no, that’s too Machiavellian even for us. The machine comes with free 60-day VIP support, whereby you don’t have to wait in the queue to have issues fixed. After the 60-day period is up, you can still get free support and a tech will still remote in, but you have to wait longer on the phone. There’s also the ability to back up your data remotely to Telikin’s servers for $10 a month, and that includes the VIP support treatment.

Maintenance of the unit should be fairly painless, as updates are pushed out by Telikin as needed, and the company promises to offer updates for the life of the unit.

In ease-of-use, the Telikin is extremely simple—perhaps easier than the iPad for some. In our attachment test, we could open PDF and Word files without issue, but Zip files confused it.

The Telikin’s main weakness is in gaming. There are a handful of games that come installed with the OS, but the rest will have to be Flash-based. That’s not bad for a casual gamer, but the optimized iPad 2 games are far stronger. The machine has its strengths, though. The 18-inch screen is certainly easier for folks with vision issues, and the real keyboard is appreciated.

In video consumption, we could watch Flash-based videos on Vimeo and YouTube, but sadly, the Telikin failed on both Netflix and Hulu.

We’re still a bit leery about the initial error and locks, but frankly, this isn’t a bad solution for a senior who wants a bigger screen, full keyboard, and doesn’t mind something that’s not as polished or extensible as the iPad 2.

$700, www.telikin.com