3 year old computer nerd

[dragonxx4]

My girlfriend has a 3 year old son and he loves playing around on my computer. I usually sit with him and poke around on the computer, but sometimes he wants to play with it by himself. What I was wondering is if there is a desktop program that I could download so he could do it himself. Somthing that would be safe and wouldnt kill my computer if he wanted to just push buttons. Thank for your help in advance.

-CJ-

[EzyStvy]

If you had a USB keyboard you could unplug it...

[dragonxx4]

lol thats actually a good idea. cant think of much that could go wrong usin the mouse. the little tike has gotten good at using the mouse. he knows how to open the start menu and run the programs he wants to use. kid games i installed on there for him.

[Floppyman]

If you're running XP or Win2k you could always give him his own limited account that would only allow him to execute and run programs, not have access to any of the drives, if that's possible. I have never looked at it that close. HTH

[EDB]

You could use a program like Deepfreeze which doesn't save any changes made to the system unless you turn it off. Sorry, if that's not clear... Deep freeze maintains a system state, and any changes made to it get erased on reboot. They use it in the school district here, so student's can't mess up the comps so much.

So all the button poking and strange things that happen disappear on reboot...

http://www.faronics.com/html/deepfreeze.asp

[edfair]

At around 3 years they can retain enough to be able to boot a system and play with stuff.
I gave the first grandkid an IBM PC and some games when he hit 3. He learned to spell his name with the user name and went on from there. It helped that his dad was heavy into systems so I didn't have to do online support.
And that leveraged into the 6 other kids in the family all being heavy users.

Would you consider getting a refurbed system for the kid's use? They sell, with all the stuff needed, for $150 and under if you look hard enough.