[theFIRMbss]

>Keep Yer Paws Off Your PC: Preventing End-Users from Installing Applications

If I were running a business, I'd consider using thin clients and just take away general purpose PCs. Keep workers focused on specific jobs. Let them click around the net on their home machine.

[Myrddin]

Your "users" must be limited to very simple tasks. I do lots of software development in C++/C/C#/PIC assembler for embedded systems and signal processing. My tool vendors are on the internet. That's how they support me with tools, patches, sample code, bug tracking. The tools are Windows and Linux based. Target hardware includes specialized PIC microcontrollers. A thin client won't hack it for anything more trivial web "applications" and a few select X Windows applications that run on a remote server.