or you Windows users out there, Microsoft recently released a free add-on for Windows XP and Vista called SteadyState. Whether you manage computers in a school computer lab or an Internet cafe, a library, or even in your home, Windows SteadyState helps make it easy for you to keep your computers running the way you want them to, no matter who uses them.

Briefly, SteadyState allows you to set up your computer as a shared workstation with multiple accounts so that others can use it. “But Windows already lets us do that!,” you say? True. But SteadyState is designed to allow you to easily specify what is allowed and forbidden for certain users, protecting those prying eyes from the dangers that lurk. And if you have a little hacker in the family (or perhaps a well-intentioned but computer-challenged and accident-prone friend or relative), you can protect your computer from system-wide changes.

Here is a sampling of the available features:

• Lock the profile down so that no settings are saved after use. This is good for a temporary “rubber room” to let kids explore, without worrying about the consequences.
• Limit the amount of time that a certain account has access to the internet or before logging-out altogether. Great for setting time limits for kids.
• Set Windows restrictions, such as blocking access to the Registry editor, Task Manager, Control Panel, etc.; preventing users from changing their passwords or locking the computer; and prevent access to certain drives and devices. You can even force all hard-disk writes to be saved to a cache file (serving as a pseudo disk and effectively protecting your real hard drive from being altered). You can later select whether to retain some of these changes or to dump the cache file altogether.
• Set feature restrictions: Lock-down the Internet, prevent downloading and installation of applications, etc. You can block certain programs from running (no chat clients? no games?). Sure, SteadyState lets you specify blacklisted web sites that are banned (and in combination with the aforementioned ScrubIT, you can sleep soundly knowing your kids are protected from the majority of internet threats) — but it also lets you limit Internet browsing to a selection of safe sites specified in a whitelist. Finally, to monitor what those shrewd kids have been up to, you can block access to Internet Explorer’s settings and prevent clearing of the system cache and browser history. (This feature does not work on other browsers, such as Firefox.)

Lifehacker has a screenshot tour of SteadyState, and there’s an interactive video on the SteadyState web site. You may download SteadyState for free here.