Ensuring Privacy on Public PCs Public users of PCs too often leave private and sensitive information behind: They may elect to access their personal files from a flash drive and a backup version of their resume or other private document, spreadsheet, e-mail addresses, financial information, et cetera is created; they enter passwords that the auto-fill…

Lockdown Software What is lockdown software? Lockdown software is intended to restrict access to sensitive Windows functions and to prevent public user tampering of PC systems. There are many popular Lockdown Software packages available and they’re often deployed on public access machines to make the IT administrator’s job easier. Reasonably enough, the IT manager would…

Setting Up a Set-Top Box What is a set-top box? Set-top Boxes (or net-top boxes) are simple computers connected to TV display units for browsing and for viewing internet-based channels and subscription movie services. This is becoming an increasingly popular platform for turning a television into a monitor for internet shopping, banking, social networking, or…

Incidental System Degradation It used to be common to reinstall Windows every year or so. Once installed, Windows would inevitably start slowing down and become progressively slower and less stable. Now, while Windows 7 and Windows 8 might be more stable and less prone to incidental system degradation, it does still happen. With regular use…

IT Management for Internet Cafés / Cybercafés Internet cafés (or cybercafés) are a growing industry in the technology world, especially in emerging markets. However, many of these Internet cafe owners face one big problem. How could the IT manager of these multi-user machines quickly restore the systems after every user’s session and recover if one…

Write Protecting the Hard Drive To streamline their IT operations, ensure maximum availability, and to quickly resolve incidents, many IT shops find that it’s best to write-protect the hard disks of their multiple-user computers. But physically write-protecting the harddrive won’t let users perform even prosaic functions that require the creation of temporary files. So if,…

The Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows The Shared Computer Toolkit for Windows was designed to help administrators better manage and secure public computers, such as those in kiosks, libraries, Internet cafes, schools, etc. But the toolkit is useful for any situation in which multiple persons use the same computer, including family computing and small business…

Windows SteadyState: Designed to Provide a “Steadier State” for Public Access PCs Windows SteadyState was formerly known as Microsoft’s Shared Computer Toolkit. Both the “Toolkit” and Windows SteadyState were discontinued freeware tool developed by Microsoft. The concept behind SteadyState was to provide teachers an easy to administer method for configuring public access computers. It was…