A friend has bought a 2nd hand HP Omnibook 6000 for their mildly autistic adult son.

They asked us to check it over and set it up for them - so we're doing what we can but have very limited knowledge about Windows in the home.

What would you suggest to make things work fairly easily?
I'm thinking codecs, common bits of useful software, security things (eg anti-spyware), anything that we can use to help them remotely (from a linux box!)

It has XP installed and working; we've set updates to be automatic. The AV is AVG free 8.0, they have Symantec on another machine and will probably use it on here (unless you have any suggestions).

I've added:
* Firefox
* OpenOffice

Thoughts?

VLC, that should cover pretty much every base video and audio-wise.

Adobe reader or foxit reader, quicktime, flash plugin for IE and FF, (and flashblock too, if you ask me, for FF), a free PDF creator (the name escapes me), rename admin account, ensure all accounts password protected, turn on remote desktop (won't help w/o port forwarding), install adaware, empty recycle bin, empty IE's disk cache, shrink IE's disk cache, remove IE icon from desktop, run windows update until it tells you there's nothing for your computer, update AV, run a full AV scan, and last of all, leave it defragmenting the hard drive.

That's a good start at least.

Matthew

thanks Andy/Matthew - we just don't do these things on out boxes so we tend to forget (or just not know!)

There's a JkDefragGUI that will handle setting up scheduled defrags, too. I'd get that and set it up to run at 3AM or some such. You might need to then edit the schedule (with the Windows "Scheduled Tasks" application) manually in order to have the computer wake up for the task, since it's a laptop.

Active@ Hard Disk Monitor is a SMART monitor for Windows. You can set it up to email someone when it detects problems.

You also might want to consider a VNC server instead of/in addition to Remote Desktop. RD won't allow you to control the existing display. There are a variety out there. I like UltraVNC because it can do domain authentication, but that's probably not a concern for you.

http://teamviewer.com/ is a nice remote support option too, no need to forward any ports. Based on vnc i think. Free for non commercial use.

Like others have said:

AVG 8 (just use that - it will have the least interaction with the user)

Firefox with adblock

GMail

Foxit (again, doesn't ask for any interaction and is speedier than Adobe)

VLC (just install it with every option, and it will handle every media request that's asked of the machine - no codec headaches)

Lastly, either install only Word/Excel, or install something like AbiWord. Don't complicate the machine with installing extraneous programs like Access. Then clean up the Start > Programs menu to take out unneeded links.

I just set up a system for someone's tech-wary 85 year old parents, and the idea was similar - set it up so as little can freak them out as possible, and put on programs that do basic tasks well or cover most conceivable situations.

To finish up, I'd enable the quick launch toolbar, and put the links to Word, Firefox, GMail (specifically), and whatever other important programs in the toolbar, on the desktop, and in the Start menu (not Start > All Programs, but the Start menu its self).

*edit*
For remote control apps, check out this top-five summary (based on voting by readers on that site). Looks like TightVNC will do Linux->Windows.

Just wanted to say thanks for the advice - it all went well and seems to be fine

Dude, That teamviewer software is NICE. I've been looking for something like that for a while. Don't have to explain to someone how to get their IP, what an IP is, how to put themselves on a dmz or forward specific ports... etc. Very slick.

Thanks for the link.