A surface (rt) for mom?

[ajdroidx]

So, my mom is a shutterbug as well, but one thing I have noticed most of her photos just sit on the camera. The reason, she is unsure on how to get the photos from her computer (a 13" MBP) then do anything with them, viewing and doing minor adjustments should she want to.

I know the thing is low on storage and it is not a full PC and she will not be able to run adobe creative suite on it. I figure the thing would take a USB hub (probably powered) and use an external hard drive (or a wireless drive) so she can dump the images to.

I find her MBP is too much computer for her. iPads cost too much for what they do.

Thoughts? 350 for a minor photo editor, web surfing and a few other minor things that she could do with it. If she did not like it, she still has the MBP.

If you have had a Surface RT or still have one, I would love to hear your thoughts on the thing.

 

[MoodyBlues]

So, my mom is a shutterbug as well, but one thing I have noticed most of her photos just sit on the camera. The reason, she is unsure on how to get the photos from her computer (a 13" MBP) then do anything with them, viewing and doing minor adjustments should she want to.

Wouldn't it be easier to just hook her up with software that does all that, and show her how to use it? Personally, I use digiKam for dumping photos from my cameras to computers. I have card readers, so I take the card out of my cameras and pop them into the computer. Then my device notifier pops up with choices for what to do with the disk, including downloading photos with digiKam. Choosing that leads to a simple series of actions; I've previously configured digiKam's back-end to do the things I want, such as create sub-directories based on the date(s) of the photos it's downloading, and convert upper- to lowercase for the image names. There's all sorts of stuff you can configure, then the user just points and clicks to download their photos.

I don't actually use digiKam for editing photos, but it's perfectly capable of that. (I use the GIMP.)

If your mom's camera connects to computers only via its USB cable, or that would be an easier method for her than pulling out its card, the process should be the same as far as digiKam recognizing it.

Note that I'm using digiKam as an example; my point is that there is software that will do all the stuff you're after, and once set up your mom should be easily able to use it. Note, too, that I only use Linux, but I assume there are window$ and/or Mac counterparts to digiKam (which is free, open source, etc.).

 

[ajdroidx]

Yeah, we went up to best buy to check out some of the options. She did not like the surface 2 (the rt) at all. She did dig the iPad mini a bit more, but opted to keep her N7 instead and if I updated my iPad mini to a cellular model, she would try the mini I got now.

I did talk to her about software, namely aperture and lightroom (I suspect LR would be better since I use it myself) where she can grow into things.

Lightroom plus an eyefi mobi card would be less then a new tablet and would be more powerful as well.

 

[MoodyBlues]

Yeah, to me it just makes sense to try the software approach first. Of course I realize I don't know what her specific issues/fears/whatever might be that have kept her from plunging in, but if you install something that you configure so all she has to do is point and click, it may be all that's needed.

 

[Davdi]

Why not a Chromebook or laptop running Linux (Mint or PCLinuxOS are my distros of choice), or a second-hand Macbook. Any of which should cost less than the MS Surface.

 

[kate]

Why not a Chromebook or laptop running Linux (Mint or PCLinuxOS are my distros of choice), or a second-hand Macbook. Any of which should cost less than the MS Surface.

If the main purpose of the machine is just for photo editing and maybe some internet I'd also recommend this route. $350 for a new device seems high.

How about $150 - $200 for a used laptop?

 

[ajdroidx]

She has a 13" macbook pro as it is and is a little intimidated by it. I figure I could download lightroom 5 trial version for her to check out for a month or perhaps photoshop elements to see if either one would work for her.

The machine is suppose to have came with iPhoto but since I gave the machine to her, it would not let her have that program, nor would it allow her to buy it. Very stupid if you ask me, but what ever.

I figured with an iPad or something she could use snapseed for photo editing as well as some other functions.

Right now we are just looking at options.

She is not going to need to run the whole creative suite, thats for sure

 

[Davdi]

I'd still go with a second-hand laptop and Linux. Gimp can do pretty much everything that Photoshop can, and it has a ton of plugins for effects and tweaking photos. I know there are other Photo manipulation and cataloging Applications for Linux, but as that's not one of my interests, Some-one else may be able to recommend something for those requirements.