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What is better for a 65 year old lady? Tablet/Laptop?

My mother-in-law is about 83 years young. She couldn't care less about computers. However, one day she asked me if it would be possible for her to play a game of solitaire on the family PC. She sat down in from of the CRT and I went over the basic mouse movements with her. She wasn't a bit intimidated and plugged her way though the game after getting used to the mouse. She satisfied her desire to finally use a PC to play a game that she had always played at the kitchen table. She hasn't been on that PC since, as far as I know. The point being is don't sell the older folks short - if they have the desire to do something they usually can.
 
OJ is right that every attempt to simplify it seems to add another layer of abstraction and obfuscation. I know I have completely failed to master the icon-oriented layered menus on my elementary 2G cell phone.
No kidding. The problem is that basically everybody working in UI design today seems to have mistaken simplicity for accessibility, and this way of thinking has become gospel. Instead of "make things as simple as possible, but not simpler," the people who are trying to reinvent computer UI think "make things as simple as posible, then make them even simpler, then dice out as much functionality as possible so that you can make things even simpler than that." Frankly, it's an insult to old folks and other computer novices to imply that they need a UI designed for tubeworms.
 
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