Internet for Baby Boomers and Beyond

"Investment," "Vacation," "Retirement," Senior resources" the jacket copy for Internet for Baby Boomers and Beyond promised a plethora of riches for the fashionably grey, close-to-retirement, relatively monied crowd. But what it delivered was something much more mundane--another introduction (and certainly not the best) to the Internet. Including interviews with people who offer such naïve hype as "you're literally a keystroke away from whatever you want," the program's host delivers the obligatory brief history, hardware and software requirements, and offers searching advice that borders on the ludicrous (viewers are advised to type in a word like "gardening" on a search engine--but not told that they will be overwhelmed with tens of thousands of irrelevant hits). The sample sites shown are borderline stereotype: does anyone not know how to buy wine online by now? Yeah, a few travel and stock pages are shown, as well as the AARP home page, but I expected more. If any budding video entrepreneurs out there want to start making quality niche-oriented reference guides to the Internet, I do believe there's a market. Internet for Baby Boomers and Beyond is a strong optional purchase simply due to projected popularity and some good stuff, but it could have been much better, like the producers' earlier Internet for Educators (VL-5/96). Aud: P. (R. Pitman)