Right, my gran is in her 80's, and was given a laptop for christmas, as she wanted to get on the internet.
She's signed up with sky, since she already has her TV with them, and wanted their 'free calls to other countries' offer, as she has friends in france and spain.
Anyhow, she's not the most technical minded person, so I want to get some good protection for her laptop, as she wouldn't know what to do about things like viruses, and the like.
I've recommended NOD32 anti-virus to her (The laptop is a rivals, came with Norton), but I'm not sure if she would need a firewall other than the windows one (Vista home premium).
I use kerio/sunbelt firewall on my PCs, but it would probably be overprotective for her, asking about every single program trying to connect or recieve connections. I want something that can just sit there, and only throws up the odd question about what should be let through.
Also, what other things would be usefull to turn on/off for an old lady who's not used a computer before other than the odd word document.
Also, she will have a sky email address, and I'm not sure what program she will need to recieve them. According to her friends, they used to use outlook express, but it was changed recently.
A spam filter for whatever sky use would be handy too. She wouldn't recieve too many emails, and probably wouldn't give her email out to anyone she didn't know, and I don't think she would fall for any of those nigerian scams, but its better to be safe than sorry.
tl;tr
Good firewall, and possibly spam filter.
And on similar lines, what things in vista should I turn on/off to help her, and make sure she doesn't accidently break anything
She's signed up with sky, since she already has her TV with them, and wanted their 'free calls to other countries' offer, as she has friends in france and spain.
Anyhow, she's not the most technical minded person, so I want to get some good protection for her laptop, as she wouldn't know what to do about things like viruses, and the like.
I've recommended NOD32 anti-virus to her (The laptop is a rivals, came with Norton), but I'm not sure if she would need a firewall other than the windows one (Vista home premium).
I use kerio/sunbelt firewall on my PCs, but it would probably be overprotective for her, asking about every single program trying to connect or recieve connections. I want something that can just sit there, and only throws up the odd question about what should be let through.
Also, what other things would be usefull to turn on/off for an old lady who's not used a computer before other than the odd word document.
Also, she will have a sky email address, and I'm not sure what program she will need to recieve them. According to her friends, they used to use outlook express, but it was changed recently.
A spam filter for whatever sky use would be handy too. She wouldn't recieve too many emails, and probably wouldn't give her email out to anyone she didn't know, and I don't think she would fall for any of those nigerian scams, but its better to be safe than sorry.
tl;tr
Good firewall, and possibly spam filter.
And on similar lines, what things in vista should I turn on/off to help her, and make sure she doesn't accidently break anything
