It’s becoming pretty much standard these days that people want to check email, or their fantasy football score whatever when they come over to visit. So for the last couple years I have taken my old laptop and put it on the coffee table as a guest laptop. I don’t really want people sitting in my office using the desktop, and the huge amount of power it draws. And my own laptop has financial stuff(and maybe a few sites in the history browser people don’t need to know about) And I’d prefer not to give out the password etc.
Of course everybody has a smartphone, but the first time they want to use it I have to log in an authorize the MAC address. Not an big issue, I can see why people wouldn’t want to do some stuff on my computer for the same reason I don’t particularly want them to use my main one. But I know I would rather have a keyboard if it’s an option. And it occupies any little kids before they get bored and bitchy.
But some people have weird reactions. Some act like I am the world’s greatest genius to have invented the “Guest laptop”. Some just look at me like I’m a freak. And I get the sense some people think I’m showing off or something, Yes Bow before my greatness, I have a 5 year old Dell laptop that I replaced before it totally imploded, truly I am better than you.
It’s not that wierd of a thing, is it?
I think it’s a great idea but I can see why people would not be familiar with the concept. How many people’s houses do you go to where they have a guest laptop? Prolly none. So you know it’s unique.
I also don’t know many people with a spare computer. Most non-technical people I know use their laptops until “it doesn’t work anymore” and I don’t know what they do with it but they don’t clean it or fix it. They just buy a new one. So just the fact that you have a spare, working, useable laptop is probably foreign to folks, too.
We do this too. My MIL visits and it’s self-defense really. If it can be phished, pharmed, scammed, or spammed, she will find it and put it on the network.
We tend to gift our old laptops to family, so don’t have one to use in this way. but we have enough devices (phones, iPads, laptops, desktops) to go around any guests - typically we give them a laptop which has a guest account.
But if we kept our old laptops, we’d probably do this!
It’s a great idea. You also don’t have to tell them. Instead of announcing, “hey, I have this one right here, reserved especially for guests to use,” just say, “here, use this.”
Huh? I don’t like strangers using my office computer, either. But not because of the electric bill. (How much can does it cost ,say, compared to watching TV? Or putting a pizza in the oven ? Or offering your friends two cans of diet Pepsi ?)
There’s private stuff on every computer.And nobody likes it if you re-arrange their icons on the desktop.
Computers are like toothbrushes-- Everybody has their own. Or, maybe a better analogy: a computer is like your kitchen…you just don’t feel comfortable with other people moving your stuff.
A spare computer is a great idea, and should have become a social norm by now. But it hasn’t–so let’s all pitch in, and start setting a new norm!
It would make a great advertising theme for Christmas, too…
What’s really weird to me is that the electricity use of your desktop is what bothers you.
A typical desktop is going to use anywhere from about 50 watts up to a couple hundred watts. Typical internet browsing might be around 100 watts. A high performance game might crank up the watts to 200 or more. Since you mentioned checking e-mail, let’s go with the 100 watt figure for now.
How long does it take someone to check their e-mail, game scores, etc? Maybe 5 minutes? Let’s assume 15 minutes as kind of a worst case scenario.
So 15 minutes at 100 watts is 25 watt-hours (1/4 of an hour multiplied by 100 watts), or 0.025 kw-h… Electricity costs vary, but in most places are somewhere between 10 and 15 cents per kw-h. Let’s assume the worst case of 15 cents. Your computer’s electrical usage will have cost of 0.375 cents (0.025 kw-h x 15 cents).
So, assuming I did my math right (and it’s late at night and I’m sick so no guarantees), you’re fretting over roughly a third of a penny.
As far as the actual idea goes though I think it’s a really good idea. I’ve got a bunch of spare computers, and if we had guests over more often I might consider doing it myself. I would definitely want to make a backup copy of the hard drive though. I would be more worried about the guest picking up a virus or a bit of malware. If the drive is backed up, then fixing it is just a simple matter of restoring the backup.
As a policy, I always try to keep a spare machine lying around somewhere in case my primary machine breaks down/gets stolen. I’ve offered it to guests before when they’ve needed it. It’s especially helpful when you have people staying over since they can use it to reply to a particularly lengthy email or something that would be a PITA on a phone.
I’ve been doing it forever. Just don’t refer to it as your “guest laptop”. That might be what makes people pause. Just refer them to “the laptop right there” and it should never become an issue.
When out nephew stayed with us for 2 weeks, we had him use a guest account and we knew he wasn’t savvy enough to download stuff. (Nice kid, but not exceptionally sharp.) We also have a guest login for our wireless router. But mostly it’s not an issue - people who visit don’t seem to care that much about getting on line.
[QUOTE=wolfman]
Yes Bow before my greatness, I have a 5 year old Dell laptop that I replaced before it totally imploded, truly I am better than you.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, I patented that idea many years ago, please send in your royalty payment at your earliest convenience.
I have had it for a short time years ago, however, it was the older laptop and only replaced because it was well past it’s prime, so it never really ran great. After reformatting it did run OK till the updates came and it got slow and buggy again. The other issue is that it needed the updates to run the ‘plugins’
(not called plugins back then) that the guests needed.
Ideally I would like to have a guest tablet more then a guest laptop, just seems more casual, but I would need to get a tablet for me first, which I don’t have the funds for. However that may be counter to the OP’s wishes to get them off his personal computer when a guest needs use of a full computer.
I do second the idea of the guest wifi, there are many ways to go about it but it really should be much easier then adding their MAC address. Many new routers have a guest account built in, many have a button for pairing them (I think that adds some security), and if you have 2 routers you can just plug the guest one in as needed.
I suppose that makes sense. I was thinking that by calling it a guest laptop I might be making them more at ease, so they don’t have to hurry thinking I might be waiting to use it.
Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I can’t imagine going to someone’s house and wanting to check my email. Even when I visit my mother, I only go on the computer when she asks me to show her how to do something or fix something.
Now, when I’m at the inlaws’ for several days in a row, I may borrow their computer a couple of times if I’m expecting a message or to verify a bill payment or some such, but that’s about it.
Of course, I don’t use a smart phone either - heck, I mostly forget to even carry a cell phone when I go out. So it must be generational…
That’s exactly what I was going to post when I read the OP.
Also, anytime I go to a ‘questionable’ site, I do it in privacy/incognito mode. I’m not even just talking about that kind of questionable stuff. Say someone here refers to the wiki page on an STD, I might prefer that not be in my history just so that no one wonders why I was reading about it. Even more so if I decide I want to read more about so I start Googling it, then that ends up on my phone and work Google history.
Similarly if I’m using someone else’s computer I’ll put it in Private mode just to cover my tracks. Not that I’m hiding anything, but why not. And if they use my computer, I’ll do it before I hand it to them, but that’s more so that they don’t mess up my history. For example, to get here, I can hit S-down-Enter. That is, S brings up everything in my history with an S in it, this board is the first one, so I click down once and hit enter. I can do it really fast. But if a friend is using my computer for a while, it’s easy for them to screw that up. Putting it in privacy mode makes sure all that stuff stays in tact.
