Category: Geeks r Us
Okay, my mom's friend isn't to up on computers and software and I'm pretty sure I answered this right, but I'm just checking with you people on this board.
She has a windows ME system with IE 6 on it. Yes, I know the system sucks and I warned her of that. She wants to upgrade to IE 7 or 8 since some of the site she visits keeps giving her a message to do that, but microsoft isn't supporting windows ME so I said she couldn't run IE 7 or 8. She tried, anyway, to download 8 and it gave her the MS is not supporting ME anymore.
Can she upgrade to a higher version of IE without upgrading to windows XP or higher?
Can she upgrade her current ME system to an XP by downloading from microsoft or would she need a new computer system with windows 7 on it?
She is not blind so don't worry about screen reader support or anything like that.
I just finished showing her how to do a disk clean-up and defrag and now we're working on her anti-virus stuff.
Anyway, someone just let me know if I was right about ME not supporting IE 7 or 8.
I think most programs support XP and higher, or they are starting to.
I don't see any reason to upgrade to a new computer if it still works fine. Most may disagree.
If the machine works fine she can upgrade to XP if she can find a copy. She must upgrade to use a higher 7 or 8 IE, so yes you are correct.
I personally wouldn't stay with IE, i'd try firefox if possible, and i really suggest trying to up the OS if possible or getting a new computer. but really, consider firefox if possible, it'll help with your proventing of spyware and the like as well
That's what I thought since she didn't buy this computer new, but from someone else. I wish she had asked me before buying it, but I didn't even know she knew how to use one. I did give her the link to get firefox, so maybe that'll help solve some of the problems. Thanks for the confirmation.
This is commonly a problem with users who don't really know about machines. It can be traced to the 1920s with automobiles, and I've had to assist my parents with the same problems. Sadly, the user comes up short in the process.
She needs XP, and as long as she has 512 MB of RAM or greater, she will be fine.
I realise many will say 256, but when she uses a newer copy of Windows plus IE 7 or 8, the atrocious use of flash on many web sites will slow her computer to a crawl for sure. And you thought flash was only a problem with us and our readers ...
Anyway, it's best to see to it the memory is maxed out at least, and get her a copy of Windows XP if you can, though depending on the hardware you may even get away with Windows 7, as the reason for the size of that OS is the drivers database.
Make sure it's at least got a 40GB hard disk as well.
At the very least, get her to switch to google chrome.
A new version of ie is out of the question and if it's old enough to run me, it's not going to like firefox thatmuch.
As far as upgrading to xp,I'm not sure how prices are in america, but in the uk, a fairly good used computer is only a few pounds more than a xp retail disk, so she might just want to get a computer off ebay instead that comes with xp.
Failing that, if your wanting a copy of xp on the cheap, the uk version of ebay at least is littered with xp oem disks a few of which come with coa's.
Bare in mind though that if you go the oem root your stepping into a bit of a grey area of microsofts eula.
Google Chrome is a pretty good idea. You'll have to do some reading yourself if you're the one to help her, because the UI is totally different, and basically you can't explore it because they don't use any framework that any reader can recognize. They know it and have admitted to as much. Depends on how savvy your user is and what role you play.