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By Reid Goldsborough

Various efforts have been made over the years to help technophobes master what many of us take for granted — using a keyboard or other input device to direct a personal computer to do our bidding.

Apple was the first company to make a name for itself through ease of use. But the newest effort might be the best yet. Venture 3 Systems, a startup in Chalfont, Pa., has recently released a touch-screen desktop computer called the Telikin. It comes with a standard keyboard and mouse, but the main way to move around is by simply pressing icons, or small pictures, on the screen.

You can exchange email, surf the Web, share photos, compose and print letters, and even video chat by pressing the large, labeled icons on the left of the screen. When you turn on the computer, you’re also presented with news, local weather, a different photo, and inspirational quote and whether you have new emails, including those from Facebook alerting you to new posts.

I’m currently testing out the device with my 84-year-old father, who I first outfitted with a personal computer back in the 1990s but who has only used it to keep a list of books he has read.

The Telikin comes in two models: one with an 18-inch screen, which was selling on Amazon.com for about $685, and one with a 20-inch screen, which was selling at the same venue for about $999. It’s also available online from Best Buy and Sears and in select stores from Radio Shack and Fry’s Electronics.

This is considered an “all-in-one” computer, meaning the central processing unit, memory, hard drive, and DVD/CD player are all built into the back of the still relatively thin computer screen. There’s no separate case for these components.

Along with its touch screen, another distinctive feature is the computer isn’t based on Windows or the Mac operating system but on Linux, which typically is considered an operating system for computer geeks. Venture 3 Systems has taken Linux in the opposite direction, going for extreme ease of use, and largely succeeding.

As the brief instructional manual points out, if you’re also having Internet access installed, you might need to have the technician installing it call a Telikin technician. In our case, we did, discovering we needed to first connect the computer with a cable before connecting it wirelessly.

Another phone call was required to learn we had to turn the computer off and on again to establish the Internet connection. Each time after that, it connected to the Internet flawlessly.

The Telikin is targeted at seniors and others less technically sophisticated, so you shouldn’t expect to do serious number crunching or video editing. With the word processor and spreadsheet program that’s included with it, for instance, you can have only one document open at a time.

Besides ease of use, another of the Telikin’s commendable qualities is the way it lets another person control the computer remotely to help teach the owner how to use it. The Telikin calls such a person a "Tech Buddy."

The Tech Buddy has to first create a username and password in person using the Telikin. Then, when back at his or her own location, whether across town or across country, the Tech Buddy downloads from the Telikin website a remote-control program to his or her own computer.

The software allows the Tech Buddy to see on his or her own computer screen what the owner sees on the Telikin’s screen and to control the Telikin’s mouse pointer and keyboard with his or her own mouse and keyboard. You can’t use a regular monitor as a touch screen, but moving the mouse pointer to an icon and clicking approximates this closely enough.

All of this is extremely useful in giving lessons over the phone. You don’t need to have the owner of the Telikin tell you what he or she sees on the screen because you, as the Tech Buddy, see it yourself, which greatly speeds up the learning time.

My father is still getting used to scroll bars and other computer concepts. But at this point, he’s well on his way to being a regular Internet user.