Gates Computers and Internet Access

[Andrew Mutch]

For those of you who have Gates computers, I have another question.  I was
recently contacted by a library that wanted to do the following:

1.  Use the proxy method in Internet Explorer to limit web access to their web
catalog for one profile

2.  Allow full Internet access in another profile

3.  They would prefer a solution that is cheap (read: free)

Apparently, the library has their workstations set up to do all things.  When
the workstation is in catalog-mode, they don't want general Internet surfing
going on.  However, they also want the flexibility to be able to switch the
workstation over to full Internet use.

This is where their problem starts.  As they explained it to me, the Gates
computers come with preconfigured profiles.  They've found that they can't
manipulate certain Internet Explorer settings in these profiles.  We discussed
editing the registry but it turns out that you can only do this as the
Administrator.  So, the only change you could make would affect all users on
the machine.  If you restricted access to the Administrator, all profiles would
have restricted access which is not what they want.

Knowing that many of you have Gates computers in your libraries and that some
of you have already wrestled with this problem, I would like to know what route
you took to solve this problem.  I'm most interested in easy answers but will
take all approaches to this problem.
:)

Thanks in advance for your input!

Andrew Mutch
Library Systems Technician
Waterford Township Public Library
Waterford, MI