Protecting Our Parents' PCs?

Frustrated Son asks: "I assume that many Slashdot readers must serve as the IT staff for their parents. My folks get my old machines and just enough software to be productive. I try to protect my parents from the forces of evil by installing automatic OS updates, virus checkers, spyware blockers, pop-up blockers... But still I find that my parents end up with unwanted applications and dangerous software. What software or strategies do you use to protect your parents' PCs? Is it possible for inexperienced users to surf the net in safety?"

Comments

Get mom an iMac

[MoxCamel]

Get mom an iMac. Install OS X if it doesn't have it already. You can pick up a decent iMac on eBay for around $300, but make sure it's at least 300Mhz. Enable auto-updates. Install Mozilla or Firefox, ensure popup blocking is turned on. Done. You will instantly become the favorite child.

No thanks necessary, it's what I do. :)

(and yes, I know he said PC. I consider this a PC solution.)

Re:Get mom an iMac

[sniggly]

We migrated my mom from a win98 pc with openoffice/mozilla and a yahoo mail account to a fedora core 1 with openoffice/mozilla and the same yahoo account :) It now runs kde 3.2. The nice thing about linux distributions is all the great software that comes free on the cds.

It's also nice that kde 3.2 runs even faster than 3.1 and that when we upgrade the kernel it'll run even faster still... What else can you ask for on old hardware.

An upgrade to windows xp would have required a serious hardware upgrade and I don't know how long it would take to download all required patches over her internet connection.

We did consider a mac (the new ibook g4 with wireless internet would be awesome for her) but while below $999 she doesn't want us to spend that money on something she doesn't use that often anyway. If money is no object osx is the way to go.

Ghost the system

[pvt_medic]

I just create a ghost of the system with everything installed and every so often just wipe the computer and reinstall things. Takes a little doing to get the parents trained well enough to save files correctly, but it works well, and every 6 months i sit down for a couple hours and reinstall everything. Maybe over doing it but I dont have to do anything in between except change ink cartridges

No on Mozilla, stick with Safari

[AHumbleOpinion]

Install Mozilla or Firefox ...

Stick with Safari, it comes with Mac OS X, it gets updated automatically like the OS, and frankly will get better support when a company blows it and produces a page that doesn't render correctly. Apple is actually somewhat helpful on that last point when the offending site is somewhat important, say online banking, they may contact the offender. I believe Safari has a built in reporting mechanism for bad pages.

Re:Bad Idea

[master control progr]

Unbelievable. I was sure this was a troll, but discovered that Wired Magazine ran a story in December 2001 called The Geek Syndrome addressing this phenomenon. Amazing.

Lucky for me, my wife has a degree in Communications, and is about as non-technical as they come. :)

What's problem?

[trezor]

• I kindof feel bad for them but if they don't listen to my suggestions to buy a mac/ use linux (I've offered help) then it's what they get.

Dood, I know this is /. and that we be abunchazealots, but still...

You can run Windows in a secure fashion. First thing: Disblable useless services (like Universal PnP, Remote *anything* and so on). Second: Setup separate user and admin accounts.

If you as a third move install third-party software for netuse (Opera, Mozilla. That kind of stuff), you'll need some pretty clueless people in order to screw the machine over.

The fourth and probably best move you can ever do, is setup a systempartition with only the system and applications (move documentfolders elsewhere), and take a Ghost-snapshot. Then if they somehow manage to screw up, you're recovered in 5 minutes with absolutely no hassle.

That's four simple goddamn things you need to do, and your Windows is bulletproof enough for any standard needs.

What's the problem? No really, what is the problem?

Yes, Linux may be better (for some things), but sometimes stuff like work ++ creates things called software issues, and VMware really is more of a hack than a solution unless you have the extra memory.