We want to get the kids PCs/laptops for their rooms this year, but we don't want them web-browsing in private. (They can use the machine in the living room for that.) It's not just the inappropriate sites that concerns us--they'd go to Yahoo! games and never leave their rooms except for meals and using the bathroom (and the second one is just a 'maybe').
We could simply not install networking, but we'd like to set up a basic mail client like Agent and let them check their e-mail and reply to it there. In my experience, though, Windows won't let IE be removed. I've tried deleting it before as I use FireFox and at one point needed the disk space--it kept coming back.
Is there a way to remove or disable the browser? My kids are not compter-savvy enough to re-enable it, nor am I concerned that they'd try. But I don't want it available, or opening from a URL in an e-mail, etc. I suppose I could always try to force it to use a non-existent proxy or something like that--in other words, intentionally misconfigure it--but I was hoping for a 'cleaner' solution. Of course disabling it is best since some day I may want to download a patch or something onto their machines. Can I set up an account that lacks that privelege (what is it, port 80)?
We could simply not install networking, but we'd like to set up a basic mail client like Agent and let them check their e-mail and reply to it there. In my experience, though, Windows won't let IE be removed. I've tried deleting it before as I use FireFox and at one point needed the disk space--it kept coming back.
Is there a way to remove or disable the browser? My kids are not compter-savvy enough to re-enable it, nor am I concerned that they'd try. But I don't want it available, or opening from a URL in an e-mail, etc. I suppose I could always try to force it to use a non-existent proxy or something like that--in other words, intentionally misconfigure it--but I was hoping for a 'cleaner' solution. Of course disabling it is best since some day I may want to download a patch or something onto their machines. Can I set up an account that lacks that privelege (what is it, port 80)?