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Telikin announces a computer for pensioners
PC MAKER Telikin has announced a PC that seems to have the elderly and computer challenged in mind.
The Telikin all-in-one PC is supposed to be the first computer truly made for baby boomers and older. The outfit will be showing it off at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in early January.
The machine comes with a touchscreen, pre-loaded applications and an integrated menu of the top ten personal interest functions, including video chat, photo sharing, email, local and national news, address book, weather, calendar, shopping, games and health websites.
Dr Jean Coppola, a professor at Pace University, said that the Telikin computer designers used gerontechnology studies of how older people interact with computers.
"We have been studying this field for over five years and testing various computers, nothing comes close to Telikin," Coppola said.
Fred Allegrezza, president and CEO of Telikin claimed that the reaction to the product has been tremendous. He said, "We have managed to get the top functionality of PCs including video chat, photo sharing, email and social media, minus the viruses, pop-ups and overwhelming number and costs of applications."
The Telikin all-in-one PC is priced at $699.99 and comes with all of its software already fully installed. Basically all a grey panther power user has to do is plug it in and go. µ
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The Telekin is an awesome, easy-to-use computer that should be in every home! I love the big, bright touchscreen that has everything I need at my fingertips (email, photos, weather, news, websites, etc.) It is a great product for everyone from people that have never used a computer before to the most tech-savy user. This is a must have for everyone!
Will it be as reliable and easy to use as AOL's interface?
Will it be secure for shopping?
How much will the software support cost? Antivirus, updates, new OS version in 3-5 years, etc?
How much will hardware support cost? Will the customer real prices or Apple (3x normal) hardware prices?
What a patronising, ageist article! Don't you kiddies know that babyboomers invented the internet and the computer software you now take for granted.
Stupid. A high proportion of the machines I've sold in the last 10 years has been to those who have retired. And while many will come in and say they have no experience or don't like how the things work. Once they are on a machine it's more a case of stopping them.
One old guy in his 80's hated machines. Hated the idea of a mouse. And the whole idea of clicking icons was something being pushed on him to communicate with his family drove him up the wall, but he did give in and give it a go to keep them quiet. 6 months later he had discovered Excel and had fallen in love with it, and was busy doing crazy things with spreadsheets. A further 6 months he had heard of this thing called Java, and he wanted a crack at coding in it. He was a total star, sadly no longer with us and is actually like many of those who have retired.
While some say they don't like your normal PC (as in personal computer so yes that includes Windows, Linux and Macs) once on them, they have the time to play and learn and have fun. That's actually something many younger markets don't have and as such ignore machines. It's actually quiet strange the market least interested is the 35-50 kind of age group.
...and more potential customers are, er, being lost from the market as the years go by, but there's a definite need among certain segments of the population.
The hardest (and most important) thing at this point is probably proxying out the constant barrage of phishing attacks and 'You're a winner!' banners; otherwise ChromeOS (itself a long time coming) would have a fair chunk of it covered.
I dumped a fair bit on a Mac for grandma about a year or two ago simply because all the other options were so completely halfassed (remember gOS and its self-breaking automatic updates?), while Apple at least got it 1/4 or 3/4s-assed, depending how you look at it.
Going by my experience, a lot of older people seem to be afraid of the technology, which sort of panics them when they can't get it to function at the first go.
A pre-packaged unit might resolve a number of issues, as they might feel more comfortable consulting each other on how things are supposed to operate, without worrying about the intricacies of products from different manufacturers.
Personally I find this kind of thing insulting. Do they really mean that anyone over a certain age is incapable of using a computer? I am a babyboomer and have never had any trouble getting computers to do what I want. Indeed I disliked the idea of a machine telling me how to think and how to work so I learned to use one properly. Indeed I made a good living out of supporting the things for a long time. To think that all older people want to do is e-mail and go onto Facebook, Twitter etc. is frankly, laughable. I know that certain older people appear to live on social networks but some of us use computers for work and this machine will have nothing to offer people like me.