That's it, I'm going back to watch it again. Curiosity has gotten the better of me here.

This just reminded me.

I've got a two and a half year old kid and he sounds so much more grown up now than he did when he first started trying to throw words together, he laughs differently now as well.

Record that shit. If you don't, one day you'll wake up and regret it. I ran across some recordings of our kid just yesterday that I'd forgotten I'd made, and he was babbling and trying to talk and laughing and I felt so happy that I had recorded it. I'm going to do it again shortly so that I've got him as he progresses.

When i was growing up our study was behind the living room and the tv & my computer sat on opposite sides of the same wall. If I degaussed my screen when someone was watching something I'd get yelled at as the tv image would shake a little.

Thusly this happened quite frequently when my sister was watching tv.

I work in the railway, those guys LOVE sending hard copies, even if we receive certain notifications by email, the "system" insists on sending our group hard copies, even if we just look at them and put them in a pile that is later shredded.

What about breaking the ring off of the zipper?

I've got an i5 Desktop at home, an i7 laptop that i use out and about. But the device I use more than any other is an atom based tablet as I can get 10-11 hours of continual use on the one charge and it's adequately fast for most lightweight things I do.

When I had a Dual Processor Power Mac I could turn the heaters in my house down a couple of notches as the G5 would act like a space heater. Heck that was its nickname in a number of forums.

I decided enough was enough when the temperature in front of the computer in summer was rivaling sitting out on the bitumen on the road. Almost immediately after turning the G5 off permenantly, my power bills went down $70 per quarter.

I know there's some humor intended here, but heck i figure it's worth mentioning that Dual/Quad core atom's rival if not beat the pants off P4 processors.
I mean, just look at This.

Times change, huh?

The fourminute mile was a barrier that athletes had as a psychological barrier for years.

Then oger Bannister broke the record after training with the mentality that he could go faster, not that he had reached his peak and couldn't go any better. Record after record after record tumbled as people realised that it wasn't a limit and trained with the mindset that they COULD get better and run faster than a mile in four minutes

The guy used to work at the Coogee Bay Hotel?

If you haven't a clue what I'm talking about, read this.

Wow, I just noticed how poor my grammar was there.
Sometimes it sucks you can't go back and edit your posts.

Genuine question:
Have you considered ipads, what pro's and cons have you come up with?
To me the positives are as follows:
* Portable
* Great battery life
* Supports a number of software (skype, facetime, etc)
* can be locked down if required.
* Apple care support is pretty low cost and the guys seem pretty helpful from my interactions with them.

The biggest negative I can see is the requirement for wireless coverage, or failing that, cost of a cellular/mobile link. However I see this as a limiting factor for any technology selected. If you have cat5 wired in the building you could conceivably just plug in an airport adapter nearby and plug that into the ethernet port if you want to reduce costs for things like wireless coverage. When the call is done, just unplug the adapter and take it with you.

I'm genuinely interested in your thoughts on this topic.

Oh geez, not this again.
Some people may have this attitude, but the majority of us that suggested this as a solution actually think it is a good idea from a simplicity and useability aspect. Set the thing up with facetime and skype as the only non restricted apps, bundle it in a protective case, get apple care support on the device and set up a sufficiently broad wireless coverage within the centre.and you will go a long way to providing what the requestor is asking for.

Other solutions are either
1) harder to support
2) more prone to breaking
3) just a pain in the ass in general

I wrote down a whole spiel why this is a good idea but accidentally nuked it when i decided to log in and not post as an AC.

Abbreviated version:
I'm not an apple fanboy, but this is definitely the best solution. Keep the device locked down to only run facetime and skype, keep the carers in control of scheduling when people call and charging the ipad when it's not needed (it has a fantastic battery life anyway so overnight charging ought to suffice unless there's a busy day). Keep an applecare contract open for the device and keep the internet connection with a provider that does high levels of support (or centralised administrative group or outsourcer ) and there's 95% of the support you'll ever need. I considered the idea of a long life android tablet with a child proof launcher, but the potential for the one way charging connector was a bit of a deterrent from me suggesting that as a solution.

The roll your own box and administer it remotely/as a client is a fair idea, but requires someone, somewhere to administer the device and incurs a substantial additional cost as although it may use standards, it is a custom created monstrosity that could be a liability if things break in the future. The smart tv thing is an interesting solution, but seems like it could be a lot harder to get the device to the less mobile patients than a simple to carry device like a tablet.

the KISS principle applies here more than anywhere else it possibly could.