[dougdeep]

I just picked up an Asus laptop running Windows 7 home premium 64bit for a friend's daughter who is heading off to college. There doesn't seem to be much chance of connecting to the internet behind the university's secured gateway. Since she is not staying in the college dorms, the computer won't be tied to the university's network. There is WiFi available in all the libraries and student centers but it seems they contracted this service out so I doubt this directly ties to the university's network either. She will have high-speed internet available where she's staying – Roadrunner with a big router.

I'd like to set up this machine to be fairly secure since long-distance troubleshooting is a real pain. If this laptop was running XP then I'd set up a passworded administrator account but let it auto-logon to a restricted user account. I don't know about using this approach in Windows 7 though. I know it uses a tamed version of the UAC found in Vista but I was never wild about how easy it was to dismiss the pop-up warnings in Vista.

What would you do to set up a laptop for a college bound student. I'd really like to hear of any experiences or suggestions.

[Tripredacus]

When you get it, the account you create will be an in the Administrators group, but the built-in Administrator account will be disabled. Make sure that everytime the Network selection comes up, you select Public. Install MSE and use a script-blocker for the web browser. That's how I have my PC set up and haven't had any problems.

Additionally you can check out the settings in Local Security Policy, which will give you more options you can set as well.