There is no account to make on a website first, no verification email to wait for and no app to install on your phone. You open the laptop, make an account on it, and sign in.

Below is the whole of it, twice: once for making an account, once for the first time somebody signs in. Both are playable, so you can see exactly what is asked for before you ever hold one.

Before any of this, a network. The very first screen a new Bolt shows is a list of Wi-Fi networks, because a machine that borrows its computing cannot do anything without a connection. The login screen does not exist until that is done. You can change the network later from the login screen or from Settings, under Wi-Fi and Network.

Then, on the login screen, choose Create Account. Bolt asks one question first: is this for one person, or for a family.

One account. You pick a screen name and a password. A screen name cannot contain an @ sign, and that is not a style rule: schools and companies sign their people in by email address, so the two live in the same box on the login screen and the @ is what tells them apart. Nobody has to know which kind they have. You build a plan with the four dials. You add your lost and found details. Then you check out, and the laptop takes you into first login.

Several accounts. You say how many you are creating. For each one you set a screen name, a temporary password, and a plan of its own, so a child doing homework is not paying for the processing power somebody else in the house needs. When all of them are done you add the lost and found details once, and check out once, with the monthly total for every account on the same screen.

Whoever checks out is the payer. That is a real role rather than a billing detail. The payer can reset the password on any account they pay for, and can change or cap its plan, which is how a parent stops a fourteen-year-old turning every dial to four on a Sunday afternoon. Nobody else on the account can do either of those things.

Lost and found comes three ways. Every Bolt has a return code etched on the underside that a finder can scan without being able to read anything on the machine. What they see next is what you choose here.

Pay a deposit up front and the return service and the finder's reward are both covered now. That is the only version where the reward is shown at the moment somebody scans the code, which is the moment they decide whether to bother.

Leave a card on file for the return service alone. Nothing is charged unless a Bolt actually comes back to you, and there is no reward shown, because we will not display money we have not collected.

Or take the basic notification, which is free. You are told it has been found and where, and then you decide which way the contact goes: the finder is asked for their details, which many will not give, or yours are shown to them, which means handing your name and number to somebody you know nothing about.

We recommend the return service for that reason. With it nobody gives anybody anything. The finder sees a prepaid label, we receive the laptop, we check it over and send it on to you, and neither of you learns the other's name or address.

Recovery codes belong to the payer. At the end of checkout Bolt gives you a set of one-time codes and asks you to write them down somewhere that is not a computer. They are the way back in if you forget your own password, and they are the only way, because there is no email address on the account to send a reset link to. We cannot regenerate them and we cannot look them up. Lose the password and the codes both and the account is gone, which is the honest cost of not holding a copy of your identity.

Anyone can become their own payer later. A teenager who starts working, a partner who would rather keep their own billing, somebody leaving home. It is in Settings, under Bolt Subscriptions: the account moves onto its own payment method, the old payer loses the ability to reset its password or change its plan, and the person taking over sets up their own recovery codes before it completes. Nothing about the machine changes, and nothing moves off it.

Schools and companies do this on the web instead. You verify that you control your domain, upload a CSV of the people who need accounts, and every one of them is created with a temporary password and walks through the same first login on their own machine. They sign in with their work or school email address rather than a screen name, which is why screen names cannot contain an @. The institution is the payer for all of them.

One thing worth knowing before you set up a family: accounts travel and FamilySafe does not. The rating belongs to the laptop, so four accounts on one K machine are four accounts on a K machine. If your children need different levels, they need different laptops.