Her technical expertise does not include “folders” or “double-clicking.” She will be using AOL on dial-up. And it needs to be rock solid, because she’s in Philly and I’m in D.C., and remotely administering technical support over the phone is… not going to work.
I’m facing a lot of the same challenges the lunar lander faced here. I need to be able to go to Philly, set it up, and then she needs to be able to use it without calling me for help. I know I’m going to get calls anyway, but I want this thing to be as idiot-proofed as possible. Not that my future mother-in-law is an idiot! Heavens no, I would never suggest that. She’s a very sharp lady. She’s just not a computer person, and I am loathe to ponder what sorts of things could go wrong in my absence and what manner of problem descriptions I might get. I once troubleshot a “dead monitor” call from her by suggesting she tap the SHIFT key or wiggle the mouse around. The screen went black and she completely froze up with fear.
So my initial plan is to give myself admin privileges on her machine, set everything up rock-solid, and then give her a user account. I’d like to set up the following “automatic” functions:
- Ad-Aware downloads new spyware protection, scans for bad stuff, and removes all offending items at each startup.
- Spybot does the same, perhaps once a week.
- WinXP automatically updates itself (eek!) with the latest patches, including SP2.
- Documents from Word, Excel, and so on should all save to her “My Documents” folder in a messy hodgepodge, exactly the way she likes it.
- System defrags and does chkdsk weekly.
Can you think of anything else I’d want to set up? Is WinXP’s “remote administration” feature worth looking into?