Microsoft has done what they’ve done over and over in the past, they’ve gone from virtually zero Parental Controls features in XP to an overwhelming array of Parental Controls features in Vista. So overwhelming in fact, there is going to be more parents who are just simply confused by how to make sense of all the information they will have been handed. See for yourself, here’s a partial list of what a parent can do and see in Vista’s Parental Controls:
- Control the time and duration of a child’s access to the computer. Nice Feature. However, NetNanny might not think so…
- Control the applications a child can execute. Overwhelming Feature but nice if you know you want your kid to stay away from svchost.exe.
- Control the type of games a child can play. Nice Feature.
Choose which Game Rating’s system you want to use: CERO, ESRB, OFLC, PEGI, PEGI-fi, PEGI-pt, PEGI-BBFC, USK. Overwhelming Feature. However, for those of you that want Finland to decide which games your kid can play this is nice feature!
- Choose to filter out specific web pages, or set a threshold for what your kids can see on the Internet. Nice Feature... However, I think there are some companies that may go out of business because of this, sorry again NetNanny.
- Log every action your child does on the computer (Web browsing, login/logout, applications used, games played, email’s sent/received, IM convo’s, buddies, etc… and what kind of media your child has viewed) Absolutely Overwhelming Feature and I didn’t even dive into the sub categories for each of these areas.
|