CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws peruse the Internet via a Wi-Fi connection at their mountaintop, off-the-grid house.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET Networks)NICE, Calif.--Over the last few days, I spent hours with my wife's parents, Tyler and Donna, helping them adapt to the first Internet connection they've ever had. For them, living on top of a mountain at 4,000 feet, in the middle of a national forest, and entirely off the grid--this has been a big step.
For my wife and I, it's also been a big project, at least in terms of teaching them the basics, and helping them get ready to learn on their own. While their Internet proficiency is still low, they are learning fast, and over time, it should be interesting to see how much progress they make, and how they make it.
Over the few days that we just spent on the mountain with them, these are many of the things (in no particular order) we talked to them about, showed them on their new MacBook, and explained that they might want to investigate in the future:
• Undo/Control-Z. They wanted to know if there was any way to undo a mistake on their computer, and we explained that Control-Z (Command-Z on a Mac) is the way to do that.
• Pandora. They haven't used it yet, but we explained how this free service makes it easy for anyone to create a totally custom Internet radio station based on their musical interests. They asked how Pandora makes money. I couldn't answer that very good question.
• Rotten Tomatoes. We explained that this service is among the very best for crowd-sourced movie reviews.
• IMDB. They watch a lot of movies, and often want to know more about the actors involved. We explained that IMDB is the only site they needed to go to get fully cross-referenced information on actors and filmmakers.
• Skype. For my in-laws, Skype will be key in helping them save money on their cell phone bill. We showed them voice calling and Skype instant messaging.
• iTunes Store. Tyler was looking for a specific song by an artist, and I showed him how he could use the iTunes Store to listen to short clips of artists' songs.
• Downloading photos from digital camera. We recently gave them a Canon PowerShot G2, and now that they have a new MacBook, we showed them how to easily download photos onto the computer.
• iPhoto. After downloading photos, we showed them how to organize the pictures in the Mac's built-in photo management software.
• Printing wirelessly. Now that they have a Wi-Fi network (running on an old AirPort Extreme) I talked to them about setting up wireless printing to their HP DeskJet printer.
• Connecting the Mac to a TV. I bought them the connectors for linking their MacBook to their TV. At first they didn't see the value of doing this, but they eventually saw that as their vision gets worse, a larger screen will make computing easier.
• NeoOffice versus OpenOffice. They've been using OpenOffice on their Windows computer, and we loaded NeoOffice onto their Mac. I haven't used it, but I explained that my research concluded that NeoOffice is better on Macs than OpenOffice.
• Second Life. My wife and I are both longtime Second Life users, and we talked to them about whether they'd want to use the virtual world. However, their download limits (200 megabytes per day) would likely make it difficult for them to use such services.
• PayPal. They hope not to buy very many things over the Internet, but they do understand that having a PayPal account will make it easier for them to do transactions on services like eBay.
• Amazon.com. We walked in on them looking at prices for tarps on Amazon.com. My reaction was "hide the credit card."
• Facebook. While social networking is likely something they won't deal with for some time, we talked about how many people have used Facebook to connect with friends from past lives.
• Twitter. They have heard a lot about Twitter, and we showed them how the microblogging service is a great way to see what people around the world are thinking about things in near-real-time.
• YouTube. Among other things, I showed Tyler how he could use YouTube to find obscure songs he might be looking for.
• Netflix. We've managed a Netflix account for them (they would pick up the DVDs at their P.O. box) for some time, since they didn't have an Internet connection. Now that they do, they've taken over management of the account. I had high hopes they would be able to watch Netflix streaming movies, but their download limits may prevent them from doing that.
• Google Earth. We showed them Google Earth and used the service to locate their house, a process that took even them some time, given the remote location in which they live.
• Gmail. They are using Gmail for e-mail, and we set them up to be able to send and receive their Gmail messages using the Mac's Mail application.
• Control on PCs/Command on Macs. We explained that anything that uses the control key on a PC (Control-C to copy, or Control-Z to undo) would utilize the command key instead on a Mac.
• Windows Security patches. I uploaded Service Pack 3 and six Windows security patches on their PC.
• WhiteHouse.gov. They were excited to be able to send messages to the president and to be able to watch his weekly video addresses. They also were happy to be able to easily e-mail many other government officials.
• Instant messaging. We explained that instant messaging is a terrific way to carry on informal conversations, and we discussed some of the etiquette of IM.
• Commenting on Web sites/blogs. We talked at length with them about how comments are implemented on various Web sites and blogs, and how people use them for different purposes.
• Wi-Fi. We set them up with an Apple AirPort Extreme and made it so their new MacBook could be connected to the Internet throughout their house. They were more excited by this than by anything else.
• USB hubs. Tyler wanted to know how to print wirelessly and I explained that he would need to get a USB hub to split the cable coming from his printer.
• Bookmarks. We provided them with a long bookmarked list of Web sites, and showed them how to add new bookmarks so they don't have to type in entire URLs for sites they hope to visit a lot.
• Delicious. We want to see what kinds of sites they are interested in and encouraged them to use Delicious.com to share their discoveries with us.
• Safari versus Firefox. I explained that Firefox is generally considered the best Web browser for the Mac, but told them how to use Safari is they were so inclined.
• Never using Internet Explorer again. I said that because of its many security holes I would never let them use Explorer on their PC again.
• Registering for Web sites. They were interested in why people would provide their e-mail address and/or other information to register for Web sites, and we explained the many reasons people are willing to do it, and why sites want it.
• Adding an AirPort Express to extend the Wi-Fi network's range. We told them that by adding an AirPort Express to their wireless network set up, they could extend the range of their Wi-Fi connectivity to a metal shed near their house. It also happens that that is where my wife and I sleep when we visit during cold months.
• Google News. I showed them Google's clearinghouse for news stories. They didn't seem particularly interested in it, but I'm guessing that will change as they realize the site's utility.
• Using wireless keyboards and mice. If they do decide to connect their Mac to their TV, we explained, they would likely want to add a wireless keyboard and mouse so they could have more freedom of movement in their living room.
• eBay. We explained that this service would be a fantastic way for them to find the kinds of supplies that their local merchants often don't have, or charge too much for.
• iPhone (for the future). We touted our beloved iPhones, and tried to get them excited about the devices as well. This is clearly something for another time.
• Blogrolls. They asked what blogrolls were, and we showed them how many blogs offer lists of other sites they endorse and suggest readers look at.
• Using the trackpad on the Mac instead of a mouse. Having only previously used their desktop PC, they weren't familiar with laptop trackpads. So we spent some time explaining how they work, including how to use two fingers on the MacBook to scroll up and down pages.
• Wikipedia. I had already been touting Wikipedia, but now I explained how anyone can edit any page, and how it is possible to see the entire history of changes for a page.
On June 22, Geek Gestalt will kick off Road Trip 2009. After driving more than 12,000 miles in the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest and the Southeast over the last three years, I'll be looking for the best in technology, science, military, nature, aviation and more in Colorado, Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana and South and North Dakota. If you have a suggestion for someplace to visit, drop me a line. And in the meantime, join the Road Trip 2009 Facebook page and follow my Twitter feed.
CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's in-laws live at the top of a mountain, are off the grid, and have missed the last 30-plus years of innovations in media. On Monday, they got satellite Internet installed. This is the view of their new dish from the deck of their mountain-side house.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)NICE, Calif.--This was truly a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Imagine getting to introduce to the Internet a couple of otherwise-normal 60-somethings who, having lived off the grid at 4,000 feet in the middle of national forest, have missed more than 30 years of media innovations.
That's what I did earlier this week, with my in-laws, Tyler and Donna. They're perfectly nice people. They just have never used the Internet before, haven't watched TV, really, and even their cell phone is turned off most of the time to conserve their limited solar power.
I've been coming to visit them for nine years, and there were countless conversations with them during which my wife and I, both Internet junkies, rhapsodized about its virtues. We gushed about Google. We raved about Second Life. We couldn't stop beating Wikipedia's drums.
We'd get weary nods and, "It sounds great, but we don't really have any use for the Internet."
For my wife and me, that was nothing but further motivation to get them online.
A couple of years ago, we replaced the ancient desktop computer on which they did their accounting with a new PC that we joked was the planet's healthiest Windows machine, having never been anywhere it could meet a virus.
We also began bringing them DVDs, and they fell hard for "The West Wing" and "The Wire." But it was my wife's masterstroke--getting them a Netflix subscription--that probably won them over.
They had no way to manage their Netflix account, so we did it for them. They'd get the movies at their P.O. box, 45 minutes away, watch them, return them on their next supply run, and repeat.
Two installers from HughesNet putting the finishing touches on the satellite dish.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)Setting up their queue was beyond surreal. They'd seen nothing. Not "Goodfellas," not "Pulp Fiction," not "Gladiator," "The English Patient," "Traffic," or "Chariots of Fire." Hardly anything. Do you know anyone like that?
The last time we visited, Tyler asked me to find out how much power a satellite dish, a modem, and a wireless router used. He wasn't sure that their power system was up to the task.
It was, though, and last week, as we were getting ready for a visit, my wife said, "By the way, they're getting satellite Internet installed on Monday."
Our incredible toy
I'm a geek, so I don't mind telling you how eager I was to show off our incredible toy. Despite being avid readers, radio listeners, and now movie fans, my in-laws still had no idea that the world was coming to their door. On Monday.
Some friends visited the mountain with us, and they also got excited about introducing my in-laws to the Internet. Over the weekend, we made a list of Web sites everyone agreed they had to visit: Snopes.com, NYTimes.com, NPR.org, BBC.co.uk, Huffingtonpost.com, Google News, PostSecret, Craigslist, Flickr, BurningMan.com, Epicurious.com, TED.com, and others.
But on Saturday night, we asked them what they wanted to explore first. In my mind, it would be something fanciful. Maybe a site about science or history or politics.
"Oh, something about fava beans, I imagine," Tyler said.
On Monday, HughesNet sent two installers, and then, after nine years, it was game on.
In the in-laws' little office, where their PC lives, I sat down to work on getting the machine secured.
We're buying them a Mac, but for now, my eyes were on the prize: the latest Windows security updates. But the connection speed they were getting was painfully slow, around 13Kbps. Windows Service Pack 3 is more than 300 megabytes--more than eight hours of download time away. We had to leave long before that.
I decided to forgo SP3 and instead install AVG, a free antivirus package. But the connection was so slow that the download failed. Twice.
The screen on the computer of one of the HughesNet installers as the satellite Internet connection was being set up for the first time.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)I was embarrassed and frustrated. To diffuse the situation, we decided to turn the focus to picking a Gmail address. They suggested a series of what to any veteran Internet user were obviously unavailable names: Tyleranddonna, Donnaandtyler, Beautifulmountain. Using my MacBook Pro and an EV-DO card, we finally found something.
I also decided to download AVG on my Mac. That, too, was painfully slow--we were at 4,000 feet, far from town--but it worked, and I copied the AVG file to their PC via a thumb drive.
But AVG needed its own updates, and so it went looking for them. I noticed that the download speeds had slowed even further, now to less than 2Kbps.
Slowly but surely?
This was ridiculous. They had signed up for a 1.0Mbps connection, which, I read, promised downloads of more than 500Kbps. They were getting 1Kbps.
I called HughesNet, and a technician told me that the account had surpassed its "Fair Access" limit. It turns out that satellite Internet users get only so much bandwidth per day--in my in-laws' case, 200 megabytes. Go over the limit, you get dial-up speeds for 24 long hours.
The technician told me that there was nothing he could do about it, despite my insisting that there was no way they'd passed 200 megabytes. A supervisor confirmed that he had "no mechanism" to lift the limit for the day, even when I explained that I had to leave soon and that I absolutely needed to finish downloading the security patches before I drove off the mountain.
In the HughesNet pamphlet that had finally lured Tyler and Donna, a footnote I now discovered really concerned me: "Based on analysis of customer usage data, Hughes has established a download threshold for each of the HughesNet service plans that is well above the typical usage rates."
CNET News reporter Daniel Terdiman's father-in-law sits at his computer, looking at his Internet connection for the very first time.
(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)This was alarming, as one of the things my wife and I were most excited about was the idea of her parents being able to . This vision now looked endangered.
"In order to arrive at our Fair Access Policy, Hughes conducted an analysis of HughesNet customer usage and then established a download threshold for each plan that was above average usage rates," Hughes wrote me in an e-mail Thursday. "Certain activities are more likely than others to exceed the daily download threshold, such as continuous downloading or viewing streaming-media content such as audio or video programming."
Users do get unlimited high-speed downloads from 2 a.m. to 7 a.m. EST. Long after the in-laws would be watching streaming movies.
This was not good. What worried me more was that even watching YouTube videos might quickly put them over the top. The Hughes e-mail, though, seemed to dismiss that worry: "Activities such as viewing Web sites, checking e-mail, watching short streaming-media presentations, i.e. YouTube, and automatic software and antivirus updates are not likely to exceed the download threshold."
Back on the mountain, I decided that, slow speeds be damned, I was getting them online before my wife and I departed.
So I pulled Tyler over to the PC and sat him down.
This would not be so simple. After all, he had no experience with a browser. He didn't know where to click, or how to enter a URL, or how to tab between fields. There's a huge learning curve here for my wife's folks. They need Internet for Dummies--and now.
We booted up Firefox--I had downloaded it for him, as I would never let Internet Explorer set foot in their house again--to head to Google (see the video below, which evolves slowly).
Starting with the basics
I showed him where to type, and a little while after he typed in "Google.com," he got his first look at the search engine's wonderful, spare home page.
It was a moment of truth: What would be the first thing he would look up? Would it be FDR? The Vietnam War? Barack Obama?
Nope. It was fava beans. He hadn't been kidding earlier.
Before we knew it, Tyler was on EveryNutrient.com, a good site, it seems, to learn about the nutritional value of fava beans.
After a little more browser 101--explaining that words in blue are usually hyperlinks, and how to use the back and reload buttons--we hopped over to Wikipedia. More fava beans.
But things went downhill when we tried Gmail so that Tyler could send his first-ever e-mail--can you remember when you did that? The site wouldn't load. The connection was simply too slow.
My wife and I had built this moment up so much in our minds over the years that we were clearly more excited than her parents. Yet Tyler was frustrated. And that was crushing.
Looking for a graceful way out, we adjourned from Gmail and moved into their living room to talk.
We asked them what they were looking forward to using the Internet for. And again, practicality won. Donna said she wanted to be able to get better fire information than she could on the radio, which makes sense, since they live in the middle of a forest.
I said there were always real-time maps online during fires.
"That's exactly what we want to know," she said.
Tyler added, "That'll be tremendously helpful."
They also said they were excited about investigating the various weather sites, since they are deeply subject to the whims of their environment. And, yes, they expect to spend a lot of time reading up on nutrition.
For my wife and me, it was time to leave. But I felt sheepish.
I had had such high hopes for this experience, and instead, it had been deeply disappointing. I couldn't even bring myself to ask what they had thought about their initial experiences on the Internet.
But it will get better. We'll go back soon to make sure.
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