for the competent person, doing lots of things - and both willing and able to keep ahead of the vandals.
Murica is aging. Lots of folks actually 'need' very few capabilities. (Have to make a lightning trip with a friend, to LA sometime - and setup Something for her mother: which prompted me to wonder again, about what is 'adequate'.) Easy enough to reload? - for mere rec. web surfing but mostly for e-mail! and maybe fam. pix display.
I haven't thought it through adequately. A Ghosted install - still needs a step-by-step savvy reinstall process. (And for that, would have to temp install a CDRW - or she has to buy one.) Simple e-Machine IIRC.
Assumptions thus far: she would have NO sens. data on machine, to be extracted by fiends. She would save (have saved for her by local family) elsewhere - any priceless stuff accumulated, periodically. So then: could a complete reinstall be the answer for if Anything goes wrong goes wrong?
Linux is obv. out for her, except via a local person who'd create the simplest set of modules and.. hand hold periodically. But her family might handle certain Windoze things, with a cookbook.
Win 3.1x would doom her to latest browser ~ 3.0 (IIRC) = dead.
(I used to use the local library's free remote dial-in (pre-ISP) to visit IWE and post via their Lynx-level 'browser'. Later, e-mail to Russia & back was just fine via same OS.. Then.) Hmmm - was that All-DOS, via Trumpet (??) Too long ago.
But as you suggest - it's 2002. I'm still thinking.. There *has* to be some starkly-simpler solution for uncritical browsing, e-mail and - reload by incompetents. Doesn't there?
Ashton