Well, yes, in the same way that Socrates is mortal because Socrates died.

The thing is, in the good ol' US of A, where less than 10 years ago you could be a felon for owning 6 dildos, we can be pretty darn stupid. http://www.dumblaws.com/law/938. Yes, the law was overturned, but just one example of the way we are tough on crime. And here's some fun with our drug laws. http://netnebraska.org/article/news/938774/how-tough-nebraska-pot-possession-depends-county I like the quote “Let’s say you have a marijuana brownie,” Steller explained. “We would prosecute you for the possession of hash which is a class 4 felony.”

That's not arbitrary; that's a firm and understandable rule. Arbitrary would be if my 10 million dollar donation got me a law in my favor and yours did not. :)

Just like the rule I learned in copyrights class: The Mouse always wins. That means that no matter what the law is or how it has always been interpreted, Disney gets what it wants.

Lynx? It does cookies but no css and javascript.

What type of problems? Is she installing a bunch of ad toolbars? So many install in the user folder, so no admin rights are necessary. Some of the pop-up malware doesn't need to have admin rights to infect the pc. They drop the executable in the appdata folder or a subfolder with a randomized name and start up from HKCU\software\microsoft\windows\start so it is all in the user's area. Try firefox (or chrome) with adblock and change the shortcut icon to the IE icon. Migrate bookmarks and few people will notice the difference.

Does she just hibernate the computer and rarely reboots, so you get slowness because of memory leaks?

I'll second the suggestion to upgrade from vista to 7. From a user's perspective they are practically identical in look and feel. Only a few icons have changed and I'll bet you can find a skin for 7 to make it look exactly like vista.

I like the tablet suggestions, but if the person is really change adverse, that can be a big shock. I hate to say it, but windows rt might be the best way to transition her to a tablet. If you like the idea of a tablet, try a Kindle as a cheap way to test the waters.

It's future proof for several reasons:
--A cloud service(I'll use Google Drive as an example, but there are many) is distributed, with backups, and will shift data over to new technology as needed. Pretend Google Drive started off 30 years ago. At the time, they'd probably store your data on tape(yeah, yeah, slow access times, but that's not the point of this example). Then they switch over to ide hard drives. Then they make the switch to scsi, then sata. 5 years from now they switch to SuperDuperSSD. From your perspective, none of that matters. From your perspective, you put data on Google Drive, you take data off Google Drive. The technology they store it on doesn't matter and is going to change and adapt as new tech comes on line. I put my money in the bank, I take my money out of the bank. I don't care what the bank does or how they store it, I just want my money.

--A cloud service is redundant. When Lex Luthor finally causes that earthquake and makes California slide into the Pacific, your data is still safe on one of the other server centers that Google has, just for that emergency.

--A cloud service is stable. A major cloud service like Google Drive is not going to disappear overnight. Unless something causes the government to seize all of their servers at once, with no warning, and in a way that would never let you get your data back. That is highly unlikely as of today. So even if Google goes bankrupt, you will be able to see it coming and get your data back from them before the cut off date. Besides, you said this is a backup of a backup. So your original storage place is destroyed, your off-site backup is destroyed, and Google is destroyed utterly with no backups and no way to access that data. All three of those things have to happen at the same time. If all three of those happen on the same day, you will have more to worry about because someone probably dropped the big bombs.

--Someone else takes care of operating the server room. In another response, you wrote: "if I put it on a server now, I have to keep that server going for the next 10 or 20 years." With a cloud based service, that isn't an issue. I don't know why any person(not company) today would bother putting up their own server, except as a hobbyist's exercise. Or unless you are insanely paranoid.

--Access from anywhere. Seriously, if your first two backups are gone and the entire internet is down for more than a day and you need the data immediately, either one or two things will happen. Either people will understand that something very bad happened and they will make allowances for that knowing that you can get the data when the internet is backup. Or they've dropped the bombs and your main concern is radiation poisoning and the hordes of mutant zombies.

--A cloud service has zero to no cost. You get gigabytes of data for free and you said this is under a meg.

Seriously, as a backup to a backup, you have really over thought this. Now if you want to do something as a cool thing to do, that's fine and good and proper. Pick the QR codes or whatever strikes your fancy. But if your concern is availability and future proofing, just stick it on a backup service. Doesn't have to be google. There are four or five top tier online storage companies that aren't going anywhere in the immediate future. And if you happen to pick the wrong horse, just download the file before they go under and pick a different one. Microsoft's live drive actually meets the FERPA standard for data security if that's a concern, but you said it wasn't.

A whole 5 seconds for a graph to be plotted. My god, I'm surprised you've been able to keep your temper in check. Having a violent fit and throwing your calculator across the room is the reasonable, adult response.

First world problem.

I've been very happy with http://www.modwest.com over the last 10+ years. Their basic plan is $7/month, but have more expensive plans if you need it. They have unlimited(within reason of course) because they know that only a small percentage of users come close to any limits they would set.

DBAN, Darik's Boot and Nuke, will wipe a hard drive to any of several government standards. If they are fine with mere software disposal of data, then DBAN is the way to go. http://www.dban.org/.

If they insist on physical destruction, I'm sure there are companies in your area that will handle that for you.

You know, it's just possible some people might want to conserve electricity. Or even shave a couple of bucks off the old electricity bill. Just because you can use a resource, doesn't mean you should. I have running water, but I don't just leave the faucet on all day in case I might want a glass of water.

I don't know, but if you had one of those little portable solar cells, could you just power an arm laptop anywhere?

I know, let's all discuss this on Google Wave! After all, Wave has massive potential for business users, http://mashable.com/2009/12/18/google-wave-business/. With 19 Educational uses, http://www.soyouwanttoteach.com/the-power-of-potential-19-educational-uses-for-google-wave/.

Unfortunately, I can't find the uptake numbers for Wave. Of course, just because one product flops doesn't mean the next must too. It's just that one of the reasons Wave probably failed was that it didn't offer people anything they weren't already getting somewhere else and they were too entrenched to change. People who needed real time collaboration already had mature products available to them, Elluminate, Contribute (or whatever it was in 2009), Live Meeting, or even GoTo Meeting. For people who didn't need the collaboration, Wave was an answer to a question no one asked. Even in 2009, Facebook was "good enough" for people.

So what about Google+? Does the minor difference in features warrant changing off facebook? Probably not. Does it offer anything outstandingly new or innovative? Probably not. Are people even more entrenched in their facebook lives now than in 2009? Probably. Add to that the real name policy and the inability to work with non-european names and there's even less reason to move.

Way back at the dawn of time, when Google was just opening its eyes, it was competing with some really big search engines. Remember how big Yahoo used to be? Or AskJeeves? Google didn't bring anything new to the table, but they were able to compete by being better. And switching search engines is much easier than switching social networks. When they competed on the email front, they did it by giving people a ton of storage. When Hotmail was offering storage in the megabytes, Google was offering it in the gigabytes and even Hotmail had to play catchup. People hate to delete emails, and Google let them keep everything for ever and never clean.

The other two big products, maps/earth and image search, weren't really competing against an entrenched alternative. There was mapquest, but even it was new.

So my armchair quarterback position is that G+ will peak very soon then slowly decline until in another year or two we'll be talking about G+'s failure. Which will be right around the time Google announces G++.

Yeah, it's a real shame programs like Word 2010 can't use ctrl+ b, i or u. rolls eyes.

I realize this is slashdot and all, but you don't have to run your own server and deal with the hassle. For the price of two Starbucks coffees a month, just get your own LAMP server through a hosting service. $8 a month is small price to pay for the convenience of knowing that you control your email. And since you get command line access, you can still install whatever webmail reader you want if you don't like the built-in version. I still prefer Thunderbird to webmail(but I dislike version 5) but if I wanted, I could drop in pretty much any webmail client on the server.

Yes and that's been true for decades. I remember my folks going to a couple of those stupid timeshare talks just so they could get a free cheap gift. They knew they weren't getting the big prize(if anyone ever does, which I doubt) but they'd take the crap prize.

And my mom still collects all of the dead tree coupons and does triple coupons with rebates for brands she'd never normally buy but can get for near free. Once the coupons are gone, back to the regular brands and stores.

So this isn't even a GroupOn thing. It's been around for decades. Anyone see the sequel to A Christmas Story where the mother is getting the china dishes from the theatre(or trying to anyway)?

Don't forget the possibility that IT actually offers this service but the person is not aware of it. Or it is offered in a way other than a native iPhone app.

If I had a nickel for every time someone said we should implement X when it actually has been implemented, documented on the documentation site, with training offered for years. . . .

Amen to storing files deleted from a network share. From a user's perspective, a file is a file (which is as it should be) and hitting the delete key should work the same regardless of where the file is actually stored.