Need a solution for 12 year old PC

[Cutthroat]

So I have this 12 year old PC running Win95 at work, it has one task, to run one very simple MS works spreadsheet. Unfortunately some inexperienced employees still manage to do things like copy the spreadsheet then mess up the formulas etc.

I need to find a way to make the PC more of a kiosk so the spreadsheet is the only thing ever on the screen and nothing can ever be changed or modified. Obviously I`m not going to be able to do this with Win95. Is there a Linux distro I can do this with or something that will work on this old PC.

Or should I just live with having to fix it from time to time until it gets a hand me down.

Specs: Approx 300-400MHZ Intel x86 CPU (I think it was a pentium 1 but I can`t remember), and 32 or 64MB RAM.

 

[SoulAssassin]

protect the formula cells w a password...also make sure you're doing backups. It's highly likely that hard drive will crash at some point

 

[Cutthroat]

The sheet is password protected, that doesn't stop it from being copied, and it seems somebody guessed the password. Backups aren't necessary, it only does one spreadsheet, we don't even save it, it's only for doing a complicated cash-out.

 

[Smilin]

You can actually run windows 2000 on that thing I believe.

It will run like crap but if all it's doing is displaying a page then you won't be able to tell.

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: Smilin
You can actually run windows 2000 on that thing I believe.

It will run like crap but if all it's doing is displaying a page then you won't be able to tell.

I don't have a copy of Windows 2000, but could probably get one. But would I be able to create the 'kiosk' environment that I want.

 

[bsobel]

Know anyone handy with Visual Basic, sounds like an hour or two to make it into an app for you and be done with it...

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat

Originally posted by: Smilin
You can actually run windows 2000 on that thing I believe.

It will run like crap but if all it's doing is displaying a page then you won't be able to tell.

I don't have a copy of Windows 2000, but could probably get one. But would I be able to create the 'kiosk' environment that I want.

The only easy Kiosk that I know of is kiosk mode in IE. It glues it to a particular web page and that's it. You could convert the file to html and do this if you would like. It's pretty easy. Just search on kiosk mode for IE.

Other than that you just use NTFS & Cell permissions to protect the file. Cell permissions will keep people from editing the onscreen copy. NTFS would protect it from getting deleted.

 

[Cutthroat]

IE Kiosk mode is an excellent idea. Any idea how I would convert the spreadsheet to html though? I'm not bad with html, but no expert. And how would I make the window larger than the screen so it can't be closed and covers the taskbar as well (like some malware does)?

bsobel, it's certainly not me, but I might know someone. Although you make me think I should learn some basics, any idea how I would get started if I wanted to play with it a bit?

 

[nweaver]

not sure if that version supports it, but in any newer version of offic, file->save as

scroll the taskbar out of site (you can manually bring it up if needed) and put IE in full screen mode.

 

[Smilin]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
IE Kiosk mode is an excellent idea. Any idea how I would convert the spreadsheet to html though? I'm not bad with html, but no expert. And how would I make the window larger than the screen so it can't be closed and covers the taskbar as well (like some malware does)?

bsobel, it's certainly not me, but I might know someone. Although you make me think I should learn some basics, any idea how I would get started if I wanted to play with it a bit?

For Excel you should be able to save as.. and select web page or html as the output format.

IE in kiosk mode:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/154780

Note: there is no obvious way to close IE from kiosk mode. It fully covers the screen and hides the start bar. It can actually be closed by alt-f4 but if you launch it from a looping batch file that has the call command it will quickly relaunch. It's not completely immune to tampering but someone would have to be fairly clever and have intent.

Give it a try right now if you want. Do start run and type:

iexplorer -k about:blank
or
iexplorer -k http://www.microsoft.com

 

[Cutthroat]

Thanks for the info so far, the kiosk mode works good, I can get it to display the exported html document from excel. But the HTML document is not interactive, I need it to act just like the spreadsheet so the employees can enter their data in particular cells and it will calculate how much they owe. I'm thinking I need to create a webpage from scratch that will act like a spreadsheet, but I'm not sure how to do math within an html webpage, or would I need to use MYSQL and a PHP webpage to do such a thing?

 

[RebateMonger]

You can publish interactive spreadsheets as web pages in IIS. You can install IIS in XP Professional or Windows Server. You will then be able to access the spreadsheet from any internal PC that runs Internet Explorer.

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: RebateMonger
You can publish interactive spreadsheets as web pages in IIS. You can install IIS in XP Professional or Windows Server. You will then be able to access the spreadsheet from any internal PC that runs Internet Explorer.

Good to know, thanks. But it's doubtful I could get the old machine to run XP or Windows server, the other PC in the office has XP, but they are not networked, and networking them is more trouble than it's worth at this point.

Is there any way I can build the interactive webpage on my Vista PC and just use a floppy to copy it to the old PC? I thought I'd heard IIS doesn't work with Vista or something? I've never used IIS before...[goes to have a look].

 

[Cutthroat]

OK I installed IIS on Vista, unfortunately I see no difference in the way I can save documents in Excel. Apparently I don't know how it works, I can't even find any way to use it.

Wait I found Windows Powershell 1.0, is that what I should be using? Anyway I quickly browsed some documentation and think it looks well above my ability.

 

[Cogman]

Humm, Here is what I would do, not quite a kiosk but close enough. Install linux. create the spread sheet as one user, give everyone read permissions but not write permissions, then create a kiosk user. Go to the kiosk users home directory and edit the file (or create it) .xinitrc delete everything in there and only add the line "openoffice spreadsheet.xml" (or whatever the command is.) and make sure open office is set to full screen.

If you do that, the only thing that will startup is Open office, it won't have an x button in the top right corner so they have to struggle a bit to close the program. If they do close it they will find that they can't do anything else. They can still open things but I guess you'll just have to yell at them for that . A restart of X will fix it anyways

 

[Cogman]

Well, I just tried my Xinitrc idea, It didn't work Sorry for the false hope, you can still try and edit all your Xinit docs and see what happens but I was unsuccessful in makeing it work on my Ubuntu computer

 

[KeypoX]

300mhz P1's didnt come out till the year 2000, how far we have come, so it isnt 12 years old

 

[DieHardware]

Originally posted by: KeypoX
300mhz P1's didnt come out till the year 2000, how far we have come, so it isnt 12 years old

P1's stopped @ 233MHz, and 300MHz CPU's were out long before 2000.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
OK I installed IIS on Vista, unfortunately I see no difference in the way I can save documents in Excel. Apparently I don't know how it works, I can't even find any way to use it.

Wait I found Windows Powershell 1.0, is that what I should be using? Anyway I quickly browsed some documentation and think it looks well above my ability.

What the heck man, just do what smilin' said: Open the spreadsheet in Excel and then do a "Save As..." and select html as the output type (output type is the drop-down box at the bottom, right below where you type in the document name).

Then you'll have an html document on your computer that you just open directly with IE, such as like this:

iexplorer -k c:\path\to\spreadsheet.html

No need to mess with IIS or networking, or anything else really.

 

[masteraleph]

Originally posted by: KeypoX
300mhz P1's didnt come out till the year 2000, how far we have come, so it isnt 12 years old

I bought a P2 266 in 1997, and there were 300mhz processors available at the time.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: masteraleph

Originally posted by: KeypoX
300mhz P1's didnt come out till the year 2000, how far we have come, so it isnt 12 years old

I bought a P2 266 in 1997, and there were 300mhz processors available at the time.

Yep, and it was a P2.

Seems like there was a mobile P1-266mmx that was rare, even a 300 I think, but maybe I'm not remembering correctly. It's been a loooong time. Desktop P1s stopped at 233 for sure, and that was MMX only. Non-MMX topped @ 200mhz.

Oh, maybe I'm actually remembering the mobile P133mmx, which didn't have a desktop counterpart.

off to google :

ooo they're both as I remember :

http://www.geeks.com/details.a...nvtid=P266MMXM&cat=CPU

http://auctions.overstock.com/item/40432198

 

[Cutthroat]

Originally posted by: Brazen

Originally posted by: Cutthroat
OK I installed IIS on Vista, unfortunately I see no difference in the way I can save documents in Excel. Apparently I don't know how it works, I can't even find any way to use it.

Wait I found Windows Powershell 1.0, is that what I should be using? Anyway I quickly browsed some documentation and think it looks well above my ability.

What the heck man, just do what smilin' said: Open the spreadsheet in Excel and then do a "Save As..." and select html as the output type (output type is the drop-down box at the bottom, right below where you type in the document name).

Then you'll have an html document on your computer that you just open directly with IE, such as like this:

iexplorer -k c:\path\to\spreadsheet.html

No need to mess with IIS or networking, or anything else really.

It's not just for display, it actually needs to be a functional spreadsheet.

I'll be able to look at the exact specs of the PC tonight so I'll post them then.

 

[Brazen]

Originally posted by: Cutthroat

It's not just for display, it actually needs to be a functional spreadsheet.

I'll be able to look at the exact specs of the PC tonight so I'll post them then.

You still should not need to mess with IIS. In my Excel 2003 anyway, there is an option to "add interactivity". Maybe that will work for you.

 

[Cutthroat]

OK, I got a chance to look at the PC, it's actually a little better than I thought, and lots newer. It's actually a PIII with 64MB RAM running 98SE. But still a piece of crap regardless.

Got any recommendations of a linux distro I could use with this PC?

I found that I cannot password protect the cells in Works spreadsheet, I can only protect them with a simple checkbox that anybody can uncheck. Unfortunately I don't have a copy of Office older than 2007, so it'll have to make do for now. I did figure out a trick though to stop tampering (you see some of the employees are seniors, they don't know what they are doing), I just used the monitors vertical adjustment to stretch the taskbar and the toolbar off of the screen.

 

[lxskllr]

You could try OpenOffice. Maybe there's something in their spreadsheet that would be useful to you.