Windows Inside & Out · Settings & Accounts · Lesson 5 of 5

Challenge: A Laptop for Grandpa Walt

Set up a new laptop so a grandparent with weak eyesight can use it with ease.

Everything is so tiny

Your Grandpa Walt just bought his first new laptop in ten years. He wants to email the family, read the news and see photos of his grandkids. You're helping him set it up at his kitchen table.

His eyesight isn't what it used to be. He wears reading glasses, but he still leans close to the screen. He says the words are tiny, the icons are tiny and the buttons are tiny too. He's starting to think the laptop was a mistake.

You remember there are two different size settings. One only makes words bigger. The other makes the whole picture bigger, including icons and buttons.

A sign-in he can manage

Next is signing in. Walt uses the same password for his email, his bank and his pharmacy. It's long, and he can barely see the keys to type it.

You suggest a Windows Hello PIN with a few digits he can remember. His laptop has no fingerprint sensor, so a PIN is the best quick option.

Walt frowns. "Isn't a short number less safe than my long password?"

Reading the fine print

Walt now reads email comfortably. But some things are still hard. A photo caption is small, and a form from his doctor has tiny print near the bottom.

He doesn't want everything huge all the time. He just wants to zoom in on one spot for a moment, like holding up a magnifying glass, and then go back to normal.

You show him the shortcut Windows+Plus, and how Windows+Esc turns it off.

Keeping his photos safe

Last step. Walt wants to keep the grandkids' photos forever. He also worries about forgetting his password and being locked out.

You set up his Microsoft account, so OneDrive backs up his Pictures folder and his encryption recovery key is saved online. Now you want to protect that account itself.