There’s a lot of material on the Internet that no child should ever be exposed to, which is why parental guidance and filtering control are more important than ever.

Some parents turn to buying third-party parental monitoring software like Cyber Patrol and Safe Eyes. And some others turned to hardware-based solution like PC Moderator, which turns off the monitor when children have used all of their allotted time on the computer.

And while in the past parents really did have to rely on third party parental monitoring options, the the latest Microsoft OS, Vista, may provide parents with an equal if not better parental monitoring control than these commercial products.

Vista comes with a new Parental Controls feature. The feature is accessible through the Control Panel by clicking User Account and Family Safety, and then clicking Parental Controls.

By using Vista administrator’s account, you can set up a user account for each of your kids and define your parental controls.

According to Jay Dougherty of Bangkok Post, “With Vista’s parental controls, you can impose limits on all sorts of activities, including the hours they can log in and use the computer, whether they have access to the Internet, which sites they can and cannot visit, and which programs they can and cannot use.”

Vista can even be set up to provide activity reports so you know what your children have been doing online.

With the parental control offered by Vista, it’s now not necessary for parents to buy third-party monitoring software.

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Related:

Firefox ignores Vista’s parental controls, allows porn

Use Parental Controls in Vista to Protect and Monitor your Kids Online and Off

Definitive guide: Windows Vista and XP head to head

AVG Internet Security 7.5 offers comprehensive protection for Windows Vista

How does Microsoft love Vista? Let thee count the ways.

Entry was posted on Thursday, September 13th, 2007 at 11:13 pm under Microsoft, Vista.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Ruben Francia.