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As Nuno suggested, getting (securely) on the network is probably the first step. Then, depending on your institution's network & computer access policies (i.e., does everyone have a password to get on to shared computers,wireless, etc.?), getting onto the network would probably allow you to have IT set up a specific domain to which you could join the computer, which would automatically use the institutional login name and password to log onto your computer (there are also ways to do that and ONLY allow specific permissions using that institutionally-assigned password to access the microscope computer, e.g., trained users). While this requires a slight bit of (IT) setup, you would never have to enter a single new username (unless you wanted to restrict access to specific people), and you don't have to deal with lost passwords etc. We do this for multiple Core Facility computers here, including Confocal microscopes.

If you put antivirus software onto the computer, and especially if the computer is inside an institutional firewall, there really is less to worry about having it connected to the network than there is having people using USB sticks (not at all guaranteed to be virus-free) to transfer their data. You can still set your update policies to "Manual" or otherwise arrange with IT to NOT have updates forced onto the computer, if that is another source of concern for putting the computer onto the network.

Once you have either done the above to set up institutional username/password logins to the computer (or entered all the usernames and passwords yourself), then it is a simple matter to get reports out of who has logged on and logged off the computer when, for example with a windows computer using a PowerShell script like the one at http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Log-Parser-to-Identify-8aac36bd or http://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/scriptcenter/Find-user-logon-duration-667b8c48 (a good reference for using PowerShell scripts is at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee176949.aspx). 

If it is a Mac computer, just use Terminal and the command like "last >>~/Desktop/userlogfile.log" to append the list of logon-logoff activity to a file userlogfile.log on your desktop, or "ac -p >>~/Desktop/CumulUserTime.log" to get a summary of each users cumulative logon times appended to a file CumulUserTime.log on your desktop. There are also various perl and other scripts to harvest logon information from Linux computers as well, you would just have to search a bit. 

You can also set any of these up so that you could remotely gather that information and store it on another computer, or have an administrative person gather that information remotely each month for billing purposes.

Only real problem with any of this is making sure that people logoff when they are finished….

 --Bruce
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On Feb 25, 2014, at 5:39 PM, Nuno Moreno <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> *****
> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
> *****
> 
> Dear Avi,
> 
> honestly I would solve the network issue first, even if only connected to a facility "server"..a raspberry should be enough!!. This is something you can solve with very little money and would give you much more flexibility. After, use an ad hoc login software (www.pgina.org).
> 
> Best,
> Nuno Moreno, PhD
> Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência
> http://lnkd.in/6VXcrM
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On 25 Feb 2014, at 21:55, Avi Jacob <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> 
>> *****
>> To join, leave or search the confocal microscopy listserv, go to:
>> http://lists.umn.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=confocalmicroscopy
>> *****
>> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> I recently became the new head of our light microscopy unit, and one thing
>> that jumped out at me is that we have a machine that is disconnected from
>> our (buggy) scheduler/ bookkeeping program (which itself is something else
>> I want to change, but hey, windmills later).
>> It is not even connected to the local network, for all sorts of reasons I
>> was given. (So yes, students need to copy everything to USB  disks).
>> 
>> Anyone can waltz in and use the microscope, with no need to log in, and I
>> have no way of knowing who was last.
>> I really don't want to make a new windows user account for every new
>> student.
>> 
>> So I need a simple log-in program with admin rights that will give me at
>> least a log of whom used the machine last. So I would still need to
>> manually  put in each new user once, but still better than adding endless
>> windows accounts.
>> Anyone?
>> 
>> Thanks,
>> Avi