What do the grandkids need for their first computer away from home?

I have two grandkids going off to college, each with a laptop, in a couple of months. What software do they need to help protect my investment? (The grands were cute when they were young. Now, they are just expensive.)

I recommended BidDefender, Spybot Search and Destroy, and Ashampoo Winoptimizer. I am having second thoughts about Winoptimizer because of the difficulty in getting tech support. I just found that Winoptimizer is deleting files that my HP scanner needs. First, it was difficult to find Ashampoo tech support and now cannot seem to find anyone at Ashampoo who can or will try to resolve the problem.

Both laptops have Vista. Your recommendations will be appreciated.

Check to see what the school requires before you go any further!

Some schools require their tech folks to install certain programs on any computer that accesses their network.

Both schools required only the Microsoft Office Office Home Student 2007, which I have ordered. I am now concerned about software which will keep the laptops running smoothtly.

aob--The grandkids can get many programs at a discount through the school. I won't ask how much you paid, but that applies to MS Office, too.
See what I run on my PC in Posts 8 and 10 here. You will see many are free.
http://discussions.virtualdr.com/sho...97#post1151497
Also there are some programs that will not work with Vista, so you and/or they should be careful to buy or download only those that will. See here
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/933305
http://www.iexbeta.com/wiki/index.ph...atibility_List
Similar situation with some hardware.

Welshjim:
I like both BitDefender and Spybot. I was hoping to find something comparable to Ashampoo's WinOptimizer, while avoiding the cost ($49) and the reluctance of WinOptimizer to provide tech support. For 49 bucks, I want lots of tech support. Both of my girls will be far away and I want them to be concerned with making good grades, and not with keeping the computers functioning.

aob--It is hard to make a PC foolproof.
You say you do not want your granddaughters involved

Quote:

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with keeping the computers functioning.

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Other than not going on online (especially P2P) and not opening emails, I do not think there is any way to prevent someone (especially newbies) from messing a PC up.
As far as AShampoo is concerned, I personally would not use it, and your other thread shows you are having second thoughts. Do you have any experience that AShampoo offers an unusual amount of tech support?
Most of what AShampoo claims to do can be done manually by someone who understands how to run a PC. But more to the point, after reading AShampoo's home page, I suspect your granddaughters may, at first, not understand what it is they can do with it, themselves, to fix a problem by using AShampoo or an equivalent to it.
And with time, I suspect they will have lots of help from their friends at college to keep their PC's running, including geeks and the folk in the college's IT department. The college wants students to be able to keep their PC's running.
P.S. You asked for recommendations. I gave you mine. There is no reason your preferences should mirror mine.

Welshjim:

Sounds like you are saying that I am overly concerned. These are the first grands to go off and I may be acting overly protective. Maybe I should give them the laptops, a good virus program, BitDedefender, a good spyware blocker, Spybot, and allow them to make their own mistakes and learn the way I learned, by trial and error, mostly error. Ashampoo's Optimizer is off my list, however. Their peers will probably introduce them to better and cheaper.

They may come back after a year away in school and teach me a lesson or two.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Whatever methods or programs you use to make the computers safe nothing is more important than backing up data... burn docs, files and assignments to a CD. It will save much heartache.

Fink:
I agree, because I have lost documents. It has been my experience, though, that it is difficult to convince someone of the importance of backing up, until they have experienced that first loss.

I will preach Backup, but I am sure they will think I am just being old-fashioned. I just hope their first loss is a small loss.

Don't think of yourself as "OLD FASHIONED", think of yourself as knowledgable. The grands will learn from the mistakes they make, we can only hope that they will listen to us "older folks", cause after all, THEY will be what we are today. Great post by the way! The people here have been an inspiration, and help to more than I can imagine.

Just as a sub-note, I believe the student version of MS Office can be installed on up-to 3 computers with the one licence, so if you've ordered two, you may want to check it out and see if you can get a refund on one.

TEk

Consider investing in imaging software, and make an image of a good working installation. Teach them how to do a restore from the image, and it doesn't matter how badly they mess up those computers, they will be able to get back up and running again in just a few minutes. If you create another partition and set Windows up to store their data on that there won't be any risk of them losing their work (although that is no substitute for a proper back up to removable media). I swear by Acronis True Image:

Acronis True Image Home

1) A bootdisk should be created and
2) ideally, Backups should be to an external medium (like a USB external harddrive) in case access to the PC's HD is fouled up.