Dear Lazyweb,
My mom got Katie a LeapFrog computer last year. Now she wants to use our real computers.
We’re thrilled that she wants to learn about computers, but obviously I don’t want her deleting files. A few months ago I thought she had wiped out all of my photos in Picasa. It turned out to be a false alarm, but after that I configured the screensaver to lock the computer after 3 minutes of inactivity and to require a login password.
What’s a good way to make our XP computers easy for her to use and secure enough that she can’t delete our files or crucial system files?
I Googled and found free Microsoft’s SteadyState. Anyone used it?
Any other advice for configuring an XP machine for a four year old? We want this to be fun and educational for her, and stress-free for us.
LATER: I installed SteadyState and I like it. I configured restrictions on Windows and Internet access and blocked access to Picasa. Click to embiggen the screenshot.
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I’ve got an old laptop (ca. ’02 Dell Inspiron 1400) that T.’s bugging me to get rid of. It has a broken hinge, so the screen has to be propped up on something, and the battery only holds about 2 minutes of charge, but otherwise it’s still plenty usable for web surfing & playing flash games.
The only potential problem is that it freezes up fairly often. I haven’t personally used it for a long time (it was Z’s until recently), so I’m not sure if that’s a hardware or software problem. If you’re interested, I’ll run the diagnostics to see if any hardware errors show up, then reformat it & reinstall Windows (if I can find the disks — otherwise I could install Linux if you want) and send it your way.
1) Always lock the computer when you leave it. Hell, I have to do it at home to keep the cats from farking up the thing.
2) Put the kid in a VM like Mirosoft’s Virtual PC. Then they can do whatever they want and no danger will come to your real OS. Okay, not sure how to keep them from just escaping out of the VM though. It sounded like a really good idea in my head 2 minutes ago.
Justin Buist´s last blog post..Dead XBOX 360
get an old PC just for them, and load Linux.
Set it to auto login as a user and then fill it with educational thing like http://www.foogazi.com/2008/03/25/educational-linux-software-for-children/
Worked just great with my grandkids, the boys are now 12 & 10 and responsible computer users. My granddaughter just turned 4 so we are setting one up for her very own. an old Pentium 2, but it is a rocket with linux
Our boys (4 & 6) have their own accounts on their machine and Shana’s — they don’t play on Daddy’s machine. Each one gets their own password, and we set them up as limited user accounts under WinXP, so they cannot delete each other’s files, our files, or change anything on the system. At least, not until they get a little older and find a black hat.
Even better, we change their passwords about once a month, and let them pick the new one from some flashcards, so they get some practice with spelling and word recognition.
Steve: That’s awesome. Thanks!
Dave: Now we’re getting somewhere. I’ve got a separate login set up for Katie. How do I restrict her access?
You would ask that… lemme drag myself to a Windows machine.
Control Panel -> User Accounts -> Pick the account -> Change account type
Pick “Limited”.
You’ll have to jump through a few hoops to get browser plugins/updates working for them, but it’s fairly simple. Usually you need to do the install in your (admin) account, or you can temporarily give their account admin rights while you do the install.
Occasionally, some games just plain fail, as they are not used to the idea of a non-admin Windows user.
I installed Microsoft SteadyState. See screenscap above. It looks like this will do what I need. It’s pretty slick for a free Microsoft program.
You could also just use the “Guest” function which is restricted even beyond a Limited User.
You might be able to customize group permissions by using the “Computer Management” under “Administrative Tools”. (I use Control Panel in Classic View, not Category View.) You may be able to give access to certain Networking services and such without being a full-blown administrator.
Hmm, I’ll have to experiment a bit.