Linux Ubuntu is usable enough for my 87 year old Dad

I've been helping my dad with his new Dell computer over the last few weeks. He bought a Dell due to the previous quality of support. But this PC came with Vista on it; while the hardware was fine the software was unusable. After spending the best part of 2 days of his relatively short life expectancy trying to progress the broken Vista installation, it was stuck in an infinite loop. I had Ubuntu and all the applications he immediately needed (OpenOffice, Evolution and Firefox) running within half an hour of starting on it. It was late on a Sunday, and Zen Internet were able to talk him through getting him online the next day quickly and efficiently. Converting his Quicken accounts to GNUCash took him and me a similar amount of time.

My mum now reports he is spending 2-3 hours a day on it. Going onto broadband at the same time has obviously helped greatly. 7 years ago when my Dad bought his last computer I wouldn't have dreamed Linux would be usable enough for him now, though I was using it myself for about half my work even then. I can even run an emulation of his Ubuntu operating system as a virtual machine on my Kubuntu system using Vmware to help talk him through what he needs to do when he has a problem - and these have been very few and minor.

For anyone who has been stuck with Microsoft applications for long, changing to a new system will take some effort. But I don't imagine going from XP to Vista will be easier than going from XP or earlier to a usable Linux such as the Debian-derived Ubuntu. If an 87 year old can successfully change to Linux who can't ?