SteadyState

Lockdown utilities have been on my mind, mostly because we continue to hear from libraries wondering how to protect their public computers due to the precarious situation that the Windows 7 and Windows SteadyState situation has caused. We've offered some alternatives to SteadyState in previous posts, and covered lockdown utilities in our first Cookbook (pdf), but I thought some recent experiences from the field might offer some help for libraries seeking a new solution.

After I wrote about Windows 7 and SteadyState last week, Sarah Washburn asked me a question that led me to look up some of the alternatives to Windows SteadyState that might help libraries secure and manage their public access computers if they’re really anxious to leave behind XP and/or Vista for Windows 7.

I was driving to work one day, down the miles of dirt road, listening to an audio book version of the This I Believe. This I Believe is a radio program of the personal philosophies of folks the what they believe to be true. (Hmm.., you say, I thought this was a tech blog. I'll get there..never fear, but I warn you this will be a looooong train.)

A few years ago I worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s U.S. Library Program help desk, where I fielded thousands of calls about the peculiar difficulties of making a computer available for public use. Later when Microsoft released Windows SteadyState 2.0 (formerly known as the Shared Computer Toolkit), a free program that protects public computers and makes them easier to manage, I wrote some articles on how to install it and configure it. So when Microsoft released SteadyState 2.5 this summer, I was curious to try it out.

Many of the libraries that contributed to the Cookbook extol virtues on software that "locks down" or "wipes clean" their public computers. As any librarian will tell you, much of the maintainance of computers is derived from reversing what patrons left behind. Faye Hover from Smith-Welch Memorial Library may have said it best, "because I'm sick to death of coming in in the morning and having everything changed--the background, they would change the wallpaper. I needed something that can prevent them from doing all of this."