Update Your Parents’ Browser This Christmas


You’re home for Christmas. You gorged on turkey, had too much to drink and watched enough sport to last you the month. Bored? Why not do your parents a favour and update their browser?

Over at The Atlantic, Alexis Madrigal raises a call to arms: take out 10 minutes to update your parents’ web browser. They’re probably still using IE6 or something. And that’s not right. Not right at all.

He offers plenty of sage advice on the topic. But most importantly, he reminds us that it’s vital to think of this as evolution, not revolution:

“Don’t switch brands on them. No putting Chrome instead of Firefox or Internet Explorer. Keep it simple. Make sure to be on hand the first time they open up the browser to accept responsibility for the change on behalf of ‘The Cloud’, which you will testify has started changing people’s software without asking.”

You might even be using their computer right now to read this, being irritated every minute by an ancient browser. You know what to do. And if that’s not a big enough step, why not think about giving their current computer a bigger overhaul, or even getting them a Chromebook? [The Atlantic]

Image: Yuri Arcurs/Shutterstock


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