I resurrected an ancient Dell laptop (circa 2000) to install a webcam and Skype. Its sole purpose is to avoid installing Skype on my main machines yet have webcam abilities for the Dudeling’s grandparents. Since there are eight other computers in the house for use (and given this machine’s age), there’s zero likelihood that it will do anything but load/run Skype.
The computer is a PIII mobile 664 with 256 MB RAM with a days-old Win XP Pro install, and the machine connects to the router via a USB wireless adaptor. The router uses WPA2, and there are no neighbours within 500’.
Given the meek specs—especially RAM—I’d like to cut out any unnecessary programs. Can I safely deactivate/uninstall Windows Security Essentials and leave this with no firewall or antivirus? Since it’s so limited in use, I’d say yes, but the security-conscious part of me is reminding me that I don’t know that much about security. Will the NAT in the router take care of all security worries for this machine? Again, no browsing or other activity, just a Skype connection and that’s it.
You could cut out anything you want (hands, fingers, knees, and toes, even). I wouldn’t recommend it, though. Skype requires port openings - and I can sling any kind of crap I want through your open ports. My guess is that the machine is running XP (?), which, if patched, has the native firewall. That should be adequate.
On the other hand, if it’s being used only for voice traffic - and you’re not engaging in particularly sensitive conversations - who cares? If you’ll be discussing your chili recipe (yay, football season!), though, enable any crypto controls you can. And definitely a firewall.
As a side note, firewalls are sort of easy to bypass/traverse after about 5 minutes of port scanning. Just a disclaimer.
Assuming your router has a hardware firewall if you are using email or webmail and are not visting porn sites or searching for porn sites or using torrent searchers your real world chances of virus infection are very minimal. If it’s a dedicated machine per your descripton anti-virus programs would be a largely useless waste of resources.
Having said this 256 megs of RAM is barely adequate to just run the XP OS by itself and response is likely to be very pokey. I’d strongly consider beefing it up to 512 at a minimum. You can get RAM for your old notebook dirt cheap on ebay and elsewhere.
As far as I know the only “firewall” in the router is the NAT. Also as far as I know (which is very little), the NAT is effectively a firewall but technically isn’t one–it pretty much hides internal machines from the Internet. Is that what you’re talking about?
The whole house is littered with good machines, so there is ZERO chance of using this laptop for anything other than video calls to the grandparents. Once it’s up and running, I can’t imagine any drivers that will be needed, with the exception of Windows Updates.
So my (uneducated) believe was that the NAT would keep the machine from being visible to the Internet, and the only Skype calls coming in/going out are to the Dudeling’s relatives (he’s only 1 so he won’t be calling any diaper buddies).
(It does limp along at 256. It maxes out at 512, but that looks like a $10 cost on Ebay, thanks.)
Wouldn’t the main purpose of the firewall be to protect the machine, which is essentially a throwaway machine?
Also, doesn’t Skype have a Linux version? Get a boot CD of a small linux distro, and antivirus isn’t a problem at all. And since they won’t have access to any writeable data, I’m not sure a firewall is necessary either.
I do this with my P3 I’m having to use since my old P4 throwaway machine died.
(Which reminds me–I need to get back to that thread.)
The machine itself is not at risk but Windows is. A virus or trojan can turn the computer into a silent spamming machine or even render Windows unbootable. The machine can become infected if it’s on and connected to the Internet; you don’t have to actually browse or do email to get infected. So if you want it to be reliable, keep the bad stuff off the machine.
I’d install Avast, which is free and works pretty good. www.avast.com
BTW, of you don’t want to install Skype on your other machines, I found the webcam in Google Chat works pretty good. I just checked and the Google talk plugin takes up about 11mb. If you already use gmail, that isn’t much.
I also find Google Voice pretty good. It gives me a free incoming voice number, which is handy, since I don’t have a landline. A friend of mine says I sound better than my cellphone and the minutes are free.