[vox-tech] linux machine for grandma

[Dave Margolis]

Hello,

I'm setting up an e-mail station for my mother-in-law.  What I'm looking
for is ease of use.

Here's what I have:
antiquated compaq laptop (amd-k6-2 366, 160mb, 6gb, cdrom, floppy)
slackware 9.1, kde 3.1.4 (very slim with most features turned off)

I used KDE's convenience menu to enable password-less login and
auto-login, so booting goes straight to desktop.  I turned off KDE's
animations, shadowing, etc. so performance is good on the older machine.
I slimmed down the menu and the desktop so all she can really do is fire
up KPPP, which will connect and open her e-mail program (see below).  She
also has access to 'Home', 'CD Player' (kscd), 'Floppy', and 'CDROM'
(again, see below).

I installed the ltmodem driver, and that is working just fine for the
lucent winmodem that is built in.  I'm using Mozilla mail for mail.
Performance there could be better.  Suggestions for friendly, gui,
mail-clients that will resemble OE (what she's using now), that will run a
tad better under the circumstances, are welcome.  I looked at KMail, but I
find it lacking compared to Mozilla mail.

Any other suggestions?  How about some kind of mechanism to auto-mount
drives?  I know some exist...  KDE provides a floppy and cdrom icon that
all you have to do is single-click on them, and they will mount, and open
the root directory of that drive's current disk.  This requires
adding 'user' or 'users' to the options for that device in fstab,
and everything else is handled by KDE.  Ejecting requires a
right-click-eject or right-click-unmount.  I think I can explain this to
my mother-in-law, but any easier suggestions are welcome.

Anything else to make this the easiest to use box possible?

Thanks,
Dave Margolis