The first generation of the protective devices that I intend to present here has been used in computer aided education in Hungary. It was 9 years ago when I first presented the possible solutions at a conference. Since then a lot of things happend... ... USB keys were introduced and the range of options has broadened. The following questions may still occur to you as you prepare for a certain class or presentation as teacher. Does the computer operate efficiently and effectively every time it is turned on? Can hardware settings and/or installed programs cause problems? Are there issues that are accidental or intentional? From day to day you may be involved in a situation where the computer goes haywire, its settings get altered substantially (e.g. due to virus infection), unauthorized programs have been installed on its hard drive or the hard drive was accidentally or intentionally formatted.

A possible answer to, and a recommended solution for these issues and the outlined problems is the use of safety and protector cards, or – for portable computers – USB recovery keys. These devices have been developed to facilitate the work of both computer users and system administrators. For this reason, in addition to computer aided jobs, these tools can be useful additions especially for computers used in educational institutions and at home. Safety cards, protector cards or USB recovery keys provide complete protection against corruption for software installed on the hard drive of computers and the related settings. Should any error or failure occur you just need to reboot the computer and everything will work again as it did before! In this way these solutions protect the computer against user installed applications that take up disc space unnecessarily as these applications will be removed during reboot. It is no longer necessary to check the computer, verify settings, find corrupted programs, data, screen savers and desktop wallpapers, or uninstall programs that were installed unnecessarily. The safety and protector cards and USB recovery keys that I'm going to present here will perform these tasks automatically, saving time and energy for both the system administrators, professional and home users.

I believe this conference should also address the protection of computers used for educational purposes. Especially, because, in my experience, due to above described reasons teachers who lack the affinity for infomation technology, e.g. teachers working in general education refrain from using computers in the practice of teaching. Hopefully I don't need to elaborate on how beneficial or disruptive a computer can be when it comes to supporting the work of a teacher...