In any case, you have provided several notable and usable concepts for the many IT support staff who face the unique issues of shared/public computers.

Moving forward, I’d like to incorporate more OSS into the library, but a decision like that (for us) is based more on the cost of staff time and patron ease-of-use than on software costs.

And thanks for the tip on PrimoPDF - PDFCreator has worked well for us, but I’m always on the lookout for something new.

You said:
We’ve talked about switching to OpenOffice, but MS Office is cheap for libraries and our patrons are comfortable with it
OpenOffice is for free so even if MSOffice is cheap it’s still more expensive then OO. Besides if you want to teach your patrons something as a public library, you should teach them that open source and open standards are what a public library stands for
As a pdf-creator we use PrimoPDF, it creates and even copyprotecs the document

It’s nice that Deep Freeze makes sure that desktop shortcuts are always in the same place, so the patrons who like the resolution switcher always know where to find it. Also, I have a few patrons who are big fans of [Ctrl]+[+] in Firefox, or [Ctrl]+[mouse wheel], to increase the text size.

As long as people have the option to make the computer comfortable for them, and they’re shown how to do it, we’re going to keep trying to inch forward to keep pace with modern standards. On the whole though, this has been one of the least noticed changes we’ve made.

The biggest reason we’ve stuck with 800 x 600 so long is for patrons who are older and have problem eyesight. Our only reluctance in implementing the resolution switcher ASAP is older patrons approaching a PC that’s been switched to 1024 x 768 and needing assistance to switch it back to something they can read easier. You’ve really had no issues with this at all?

For the resolution switcher, patrons seem to love it, and I have not had a single complaint or problem.

I’m with you on Open Office/Microsoft Office. I tried it at home many versions ago, and was just too MS Office-trained to be able to readjust myself. I’m afraid patrons are the same way, and anyone used to MS Office would have difficulty with Open Office. I have been keeping up with product comparisons, though, and it looks like they are converging. I keep options in the back of my mind (along with Userful and Google Apps), and just stick with the path of least resistance. Here are a few reviews:
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Enterprise-Applications/Office-2003-vs-OpenOfficeOrg/
http://www.realtechnews.com/posts/1705

And as for browser plugins, you’re absolutely right about being sure to open and run everything before “freezing” the computer. Those little warnings are annoying once, let alone every single time someone uses the computer. We also try to turn off as may browser warnings as possible, too, but I always find some we missed.

Just ran into this post today after commenting on your original “Firefox in the library” post. Wish I’d been tuning in earlier when this is a little more current, but such is life.

I’ve got some comments:

Directory shortcuts: Ours are pretty similar to yours, including My Documents, but the tricky part is that since we’re running SAM as our print/time management client, anything saved in My Documents is only going to remain until they log out of SAM (which causes the contents of that folder to be purged). Thus, if patrons ignore the warnings that their session is running out of time and they haven’t been saving their work to a removable device, poof it’s gone. However, if they save to the desktop their documents still remain after they’ve logged out, which is a privacy issue. It’s always such a balancing act. Do you allow saving to the desktops?

Resolution Switcher: We’re still sitting at 800 x 600 for the desktops, so this sounds like a real winner. In your experience has it proven easy for patrons to use?

OpenOffice: As fond as I am of the Open Source movement and of the ideas behind Open Office, in practice I’ve been fairly disappointed with OO. I ran it for about a month on my home PC and after putting it through the rigors of a college student workload I found it wanting in a lot of ways. Things that are easy to accomplish in Word and Powerpoint for example are buried, in different locations, or much more difficult to pull off (for example - look ‘page numbering in Open Office’ up on your favorite search engine if you’re morbidly curious). I can’t really see this being a feasible option for the public right now based on my experiences.

Adobe, flash player, et al: We’ve learned that you have to start just about every application you install on a public PC to clear those initial “I agree” dialogs. Also, though in some apps they’re buried or difficult to get to, all these apps do provide a way to disable auto-updates. It’s all about trying to keep the patron from being barraged with unusual dialogs or popups.