I have not used the 'guest' account, but I have set up a limited account for my nephew. It works fairly well and prevents them from installing/uninstalling software or changing system settings. (I did however find out that it does not prevent them from deleting files. He brought along a portable hard drive to copy some of my music files onto, and chose the wrong drive letter when connecting it. He said "where did these files come from, I don't remember putting those on my drive, and proceeded to delete my apps and games folders... Unfortunately, some files were rather large and I was unable to undo the delete...)
I have also turned on parental controls and blocked some access to the internet... This also works fairly well...