[X4U] Advice sought on a Mac book for an elderly beginner-level user.

[Daly Jessup]

>Thinking on this again it occurs to me you may have confused what I
>said. _I_ am the admin user. They are of course standard users. No way
>am I giving clueless users admin accounts. But unless it's really a
>kid you can't lock adults - even clueless ones - out of too much on
>their own computer. They start to realise what's happening and don't
>like it (however useful it may be).

Maybe I'm not being clear. Yes, you are admin. As admin, you can 
create an account for someone else and deny that account admin 
privileges. Then, still logged in as yourself, go to System Prefs, 
Accounts, and select that non-admin account you made.  Go to the 
Parental Controls tab.  You can configure controls for several major 
applications, including Finder and System. If you check Finder and 
System, then choose its Configure button,  you get a window where you 
can choose Simple Finder.  Then you get a list of Applications, 
utilities, and other things that you can allow or disallow to that 
non-admin user.

Just to test this, I just created an account whose ONLY privilege was 
to run Address Book. I logged into that user, and boy, was it simple! 
One application. Only two menu items. You really do have HUGE control 
over what people can do in their accounts.

Now, if you are trying to do this AND keep it secret from them, 
that's an interesting exercise, but by choosing which applications to 
enable, you could certainly make it a lot more error proof.

Daly
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