Can I look after a computer in the Philippines?

[IainBusby]

Hi all,
Firstly I am only a home computer user; I use Windows XP Professional on a desktop tower, with Office 2007.
My wife (with me paying) has just bought a laptop in the Philippines that has XP Home on it.
This is for her to keep in touch with family when she joins me in the UK in a few weeks.
I know there is some sort of remote assistance possible, but could this be easily enabled there so I could at least make sure anti virus is run along with the windows firewall etc?
The wife’s siblings can all use a computer but as this has always been in a cafe, know nothing about anti virus even.
Thanks,
Mick.

In my experience (as an IT Tech) kids will do what kids will do and if something pops up on the screen telling them they've won the lottery, they'll click on it, or if they visit some dodgy website and see "free download" they'll click on it. The only thing you can do is get an all round program like Norton Internet Security and try to set it up to automatically update whenever the laptop is online. You say that this is for her to keep in touch with her family, but you know that chatting on yahoo, sending emails or using Skype is not likely to cause any problems, it's the other things it will be used for that's likely to get it screwed up.

Check out how to set up remote assistance here. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/art.../wxprmass.html

Iain.

[LEAHnew]

In my experience (as an IT Tech) kids will do what kids will do and if something pops up on the screen telling them they've won the lottery, they'll click on it, or if they visit some dodgy website and see "free download" they'll click on it. The only thing you can do is get an all round program like Norton Internet Security and try to set it up to automatically update whenever the laptop is online. You say that this is for her to keep in touch with her family, but you know that chatting on yahoo, sending emails or using Skype is not likely to cause any problems, it's the other things it will be used for that's likely to get it screwed up.

Check out how to set up remote assistance here. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/art.../wxprmass.html

Iain.

I agree to Iain

just to add tell your wife to create user account and PASSWORD for the Primary User of the computer so she/he can restrict who will be using the computer