Hi All,
I'm the PC admin for a Public Library in Florida. I keep the labs running. I have NO experience with Android.
We never have enough PC's for the public at peak times. Putting in more PC's is expensive, or even impossible in some buildings. I'm always looking for ways to serve more patrons cheaply.
Portable PC's are an idea for getting around this, but have problems. Notably, some are going to get stolen. All of them will get used heavily, and often by people without the necessary skills to keep their data private. Sometimes they get used by our young hacking community for naughty things.
I saw the Cherrypal PC and got interested. These things are ultra-cheap. That's enticing. Theft of a single unit would not hurt so badly. Neither would having one fall and go boom.
So here's my big question: How do I lock down an Android public PC? Specifically I need the machine to boot or log to a state that's exactly what I want EVERY time a new user comes on. There can be no remaining information about the old user (credit cards, passwords, chat history, etc.) that the next user can steal.
Can you give some thoughts on the situation? Can I lock down the PC's? Is it easy and fast to restore to a base state that has the homepage and appearance that I want for the library, while keeping away changes I don't want? Is there anything that would keep Android from being a good addition to public PC's in the library?
Thanks,
Pat Estes
I'm the PC admin for a Public Library in Florida. I keep the labs running. I have NO experience with Android.
We never have enough PC's for the public at peak times. Putting in more PC's is expensive, or even impossible in some buildings. I'm always looking for ways to serve more patrons cheaply.
Portable PC's are an idea for getting around this, but have problems. Notably, some are going to get stolen. All of them will get used heavily, and often by people without the necessary skills to keep their data private. Sometimes they get used by our young hacking community for naughty things.
I saw the Cherrypal PC and got interested. These things are ultra-cheap. That's enticing. Theft of a single unit would not hurt so badly. Neither would having one fall and go boom.
So here's my big question: How do I lock down an Android public PC? Specifically I need the machine to boot or log to a state that's exactly what I want EVERY time a new user comes on. There can be no remaining information about the old user (credit cards, passwords, chat history, etc.) that the next user can steal.
Can you give some thoughts on the situation? Can I lock down the PC's? Is it easy and fast to restore to a base state that has the homepage and appearance that I want for the library, while keeping away changes I don't want? Is there anything that would keep Android from being a good addition to public PC's in the library?
Thanks,
Pat Estes