Most applications will require an administrator account to install. Installing
requires write or modify permissions to the program files folder, system folder, and
parts of the registry that regular users have only read/list/execute access. Once
installed most applications will allow regular users to use them. Of course if the
user needs to save files they will need to have a folder to write to of which they
could to their My Documents folder in their user profile.
You may not be able to prevent users from "browsing" other computers in My Network
Places, but you can control "access" to shares on workgroup computers by restricting
users access via share and ntfs permissions. The link below explains permissions in
more detail. --- Steve
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;308418 -- most applies to
W2K also. W2K does not have simple file sharing.
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=301195 -- most applies to workgroups also except
that user account management is not centralized but managed by each computers local
user accounts.
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;301281 -- for workgroups.