Topic: New Dell

[Simon]

Has anyone had a new Dell off the website?  A friend has asked me to order one for them, which is arriving on Monday.  The specs are irrelevant to this question, but it's kind of mid range, and will be loaded with XP, not Vista, as requested.  What I would like to know is, how will this be set up when it comes out of the box?  Will XP already be loaded?  What do they do about user names, etc, and will I be able to partition the hard drive before handing it over to the prospective owners?

Also, the family want some sort of protection to stop the youngsters downloading all sorts of crap, which has basically buggered up their existing PC (which needed replacing anyway).  Is there any way to prevent certain users from installing applications, for example, without a password?  Would this be something to do with setting one user as an Administrator?

Any advice appreciated. 

[Clive]

XP will come preloaded Simon.  Everything was pretty standard on the one I recently set up for someone and you will have no problems at all.  You actually get the XP disc too.  I can't help you with the last questions sorry. 

[Simon]

What about partitioning, Clive?  I suppose I would need something like Partition Magic if Windows is already loaded.  They would like to keep their documents safe, and given that it's a 250Gb hard drive, there's plenty of room.

[Clive]

You will not be fazed by this machine Simon.  Partition Magic will work fine.  The one I set up was a Vista machine. 

[Simon]

Thanks Clive, I'm looking forward to buggering setting it up. 

[Sandra]

It will probably be partitioned Simon, but in silly sizes.
A friend came round with his new laptop a few days ago, that had something like 150 gig on C and 80gig on D  

When I bought my Medion with everything preinstalled already it just had a setup part when I switched it on asking for username and password etc.

Just set up user accounts on it Simon, with restricted privileges for the ones the kids can access and password protect the main user and admin accounts.

[Simon]

Yes, that's a thought, San, and I have also been looking at this, although I can't see a way to stop the kids from simply uninstalling it, just as they would probably quite easily manage to bypass any user restrictions.  What limitations does the restricted accounts provide?  I was thinking maybe of creating just one Administrator, and having the rest on one other 'Family' account, as I think multiple accounts would be too complicated for the parents.    Bear in mind, although it only seems like they were in nappies last week, the 'kids' are all actually teenagers.   

[Sandra]

It depends what you are wanting to restrict them from doing.
User accounts can restrict whether they can install programs and uninstall them or alter the registry.
If its just data that the parents want to keep private from the kids then you can password protect folders or use a 3rd party program such as Lock Folder to actually hide folders or even a whole drive.

[Simon]

It's installing programs they want to restrict, so I think the limited user account is probably the answer, San. 

[Sandra]

Yes just set up an admin and main user account plus a guest or family account.
Then you can have full admin permissions for admin and main user and set various restrictions on the family or guest account.
I am not sure of the full range of options but there are 3 or 4 levels I think of what can and cant be done when signed in on restricted accounts.

[Simon]

So, if I was the Admin, could I log in with full rights, via remote assistance?  That would save a few trips!

[Sandra]

Dont think you could Simon.
The main user would have to log in on his or the admin account then invite you to do RA on that.
If you used RA in while it was logged in as family or guest with restricted access then youd be limited to the same restrictions of that user account.

[Simon]

OK, thanks Sandra.  That gives me some ideas. 

[Camstop]

I'd go with Vista over XP given the choice.


I got it bundled with a pc end of March and i've had no problems cept having to go to the Canon site for my printer driver but there are so many new handy things like easy to partition, screen capture and loads of easier ways to do things too.

When i was googling for things for Vista i did notice people struggling for drivers around December/ January time but i'm pretty sure it's past all that and the support is there now.


As for setting up, when you switch it on you do the final part of the install in all the ones i've done so you personalise it then and they normally have a recovery partition which is 10GB on mine but i didnt get the OS disk so you may not have any partitions if you get the OS disk


I'm sure it will go well whatever 

[Simon]

Cheers, Cammy!