As some of you may know I've never been able to get my son's PC to connect
to our wireless network. It's an older (but not "old") Shuttle PC (small
form factor) which takes Prescot P4s. Since it's a SFF PC it's not really
upgradable (it does have an AGP slot - with a gForce 6600 in it - and a PCI
slot - which now has the wireless card).
I've been trying, off and on, to get this thing on the network for almost
three years now. He's only eight now so he doesn't really need access, but
it's convenient for me and he likes the online kids games (nick.com, Disney
connection, etc). I've tried several cards (all of which work on other
computers) including an annoying internal USB affair made specifically for
the Shuttle. I've tried more drivers that you could imagine, signal
boosters, antennae extensions, etc. No luck.
I tried all of the folk-remedies for XP and the "this connection has limited
or no connectivity" state that resulted with no joy. For the most part I've
just left it as a mute annoyance to be revisited periodically when I've
thought of something new to try or felt particularly hopeful.
Since he's been really getting into "WebKins" lately I decided to give it
another go yesterday. I went out and bought a brand new LinkSys wireless
card (everything on my network is LinkSys) and spent way too long getting
the now familiar results. Finally, in frustration I decided I'd try
installing Vista (I had a license for Business lying around from some
conference or promo pack or something).
I wasn't actually planning to leave it: I doubted there were drivers for
this older, rather rare system and since I've had trouble with XP and many
of his games I assumed that I would have more trouble with Vista. (The true
torture test of a system is to install twenty or thirty of these
crap-tastic, shovelware, shit-fests that kids make you buy... cuz' you love
them).
But it worked a treat. Not only did the wireless network card work
immediately, beautifully and without flaw but the install process was really
slick. I got a little popup at first saying that no drivers for the
on-board audio could be found and asking if it could look online. I said
"okay".
It asked to look for general updates online (I said "ok") and started
chugging through a bunch of them. My son and I started playing with the
system (he was enthralled with the sidebar and spent way too much arranging
it and putting little games on it). About 10 minutes into the process we
started hearing clicks and sounds: the system had found a valid audio
driver, downloaded it, installed it and enabled it seamlessly. In fact we
weren't asked to reboot during any of the updates.
Since my main worry (lack of drivers) had turned out to be baseless I
decided to try and install some of his crappier games. He's mostly onto
more modern games lately ("Harry Potter", "Cars", "Over the Hedge", etc) but
he still has tons of "Thomas the Tank Engine" and "Teletubbies" which we
install mostly for his sister.
Everything worked well.
So (of course!) we just decided to leave it. Like I do for all my Vista
machines (and you should too!) I created him a plain "user account" to use
(no user account control, admin password required for system-level changes)
and password protected the admin account.
I also tried Vista's parental controls and was pleasantly surprised.
Nothing revolutionary, but everything you could reasonably want. A white
list of web sites (you can also specifically block file downloads or media
types), time limits (they can only log in during certain hours) and
game/program block/allow lists (optionally linked to the game ratings
system).
You can also automatically create "Activity Reports" that track login times,
web site visited, programs run, etc. Not so useful to me now but maybe
later... I only set up a rather small white-list of web sites (Disney,
WebKins, Nick, PBSKids, etc) and left it at that.
Vista ended up being a really great OS for a kids computer in my opinion.
The only real downside that I could see is the hardware requirements since
most kids computers are hand-me downs. Yes, my son's is a hand-me down but
it's also a P4 2.4 GHz with 2 Gig of RAM. ;^)
He's loving having "WebKins" in his room (he plays online with old friends
from Boston) and hasn't actually noticed (or at least mentioned) the lack of
rights due to a standard account and parental controls.
Jim Davis
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