Keeping the PC personal at school.

Berto Kraus writes: "As one of the most tech-oriented students in my art-oriented faculty, I'm usually the one with the laptop. This causes frequent requests from other students to read mail, check some site, or connect it to the projector to project a file from their Flash drive. For the sake of my privacy, the health of my laptop, and my own peace of mind, I'm reluctant, but telling them to go to our building supervisor and ask him for a desktop-on-a-cart, (as they should do), is considered rude and unfriendly. One thought that came to mind was to dual-boot Ubuntu or have a Linux-on-a-stick. Another was to embed the computer in my skull. For many reasons, both are not ideal. So I'm asking you, insightful and funny Slashdotters, what would you do to keep your PC personal, even at school?"

Obscure UI

[egcagrac0]

Most art students will run away screaming at the sight of just a command prompt. Lynx should help.

Seriously, tho, a VirtualBox or VMware wrapper - let them use the sandbox version, not the real machine.

free market

[CaptYossarian]

bug them for excessive use of their consumables. like paints or inks or whatever their medium of choice is. theyll get tired of your counter-freeloading. or you could just charge them for access. tell them that the time you spend recovering from their tooling around is costing you too much, so you have to defray those costs on them.