Good article and I especially liked the last sentence.

Thanks ID.  One more reason to upgrade.

Might actually be useful for myself. I am the only person in this house, but if something comes up that I don't want to see, or if I want to only allow some apps to help keep me more secure, then that is definitely a good reason to use it.

Not bad. But as my son (about 10 at the time) showed me, there is no substition for parental oversight! This will make it harder for them (thankfully mine are beyond the stage), but they are growing up with computers, and we had to learn them in our adult life (at least for me).

This article is very informative and well written. I, too, have tried many different programs aimed at keeping my kids safe online, agreeing, of course, that nothing beats keeping my wife and I actively involved in their activities. What I really liked was the activity report. It just makes me all the more interested in Vista than I was before.
Well done, Island Dog.   

All this parental protection all works well against children before their teenage years, but after that, it all starts to become obsolete. In our family, we've got a box running a vista beta, with my parents over my shoulder trying to set up parental control. After giving them a speech about how useless it all was, I rebooted the computer in safe mode, logged into the admin safe account, proceeded to de-activate the parental controls, re-booted again and downloaded a few files (they'd restricted file downloads). Unfortunately, kids of the age who want to go looking for "inappropriate" material, have the computer knowledge to go right past it.

Unfortunately, kids of the age who want to go looking for "inappropriate" material, have the computer knowledge to go right past it.

You are right, thats why the last line of my article was important. 

Good report Island Dog. Thanks

lol it reminds me of me when my brother put up zone alarm pro to block stuff for me, and trust me i was pissed off so i went deeply inside the root of the computer and deleted all the core files of zone alarm pro and it worked like a charm i was like 12 or so i think, When theirs a will theirs a way. lol watch u gonna be seeing hacking tips for going around the controls on nickelodeon forums and cartoon network i can see it already

The images were broken, updated today. 

 

No. I don't like windows parental controls. I'm a kid. I'm not a bad teen, even though common stereotype says I am. Parental controls ARE NOT very good. I'm home alone by myself for the most part, so parental controls aren't good, at least not for me. Like I said, Mom's common stereo type assumes their teen child will look at inappropriate images. I care a little to deeply about my future for that. Right now, I'm focused on school. I'll focus on relationships later on in my life. Either way, the parental controls are way to sensitive. My mom only has the check for "no naked pictures" done, and it doesn't let me watch multiple you tube episodes, blocks nearly every advertisement, all pop ups (assuming they are nudity) even when I have the pop up blocker disabled. Not to mention (and not to brag) I'm a computer wiz. I know exactly what I'm doing, and most of the time the things I do related to the computer are in order to fix it. As a stay at home child, I occasionally will need to get the password. But this doesn't work for me. I have fixed our Vista computer multiple times, but I've always had to wait about four hours for some one to get home. Not to mention, a lot of the web sites I visit (I'm also a nerd, into a lot of games etc) it blocks web sites that I KNOW are completely legit and do not contain nudity. This can be very frustrating, because multiple web sites I go onto are blocked, even though I have been to them frequently. You're best bet is to keep it simple. Don't make assumptions. Know. Probably find a nice key logger, etc, just to see what's going on. Or something that just monitors you're internet browser, being Mozilla or IE. The time limits are the other thing. Just today, I was trying to get onto the computer to try to get advice on how to fix my phone (a HTC Mogul PPC 6800) which apparently has a lot of glitches, which I've worked through. Well, guess what kept me from fixing it for another hour. Time Limits. There is an ENORMOUS FLAW WITHIN THE TIME LIMITS. You can't just set it so I only get four hours a day or six, it has to be within the specific time. My mom thinks it takes me like two hours to do my homework now, which is completely not true. I only have to spend maybe a half an hour on it, and when I am doing my home work, I like to listen to music. With my phone broken I can't listen to it from that, and with me locked off the computer I can't get anything out of that either. The Parental controls are only more then annoying for me, don't stereo type your kid. That's probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Do you really think a 10 year old is going to go to a pornographic web site? Use your brain. Limiting a kid's use of a computer isn't always bad, if you know your own kid. Which you should, by the way. There are other BIG flaws. One of my "favorite" flaws is the thing that when your computer doesn't recognize a file, it makes an administrator put in his/her password. Not bad right? WRONG You have to put it in every single time, even if you know and trust the file. There's no check mark that says "Always allow." My mom told me to try and fix the file on my account, and she put in her password multiple times for me. I couldn't fix it. I had full control and administrative power over this game, and since the computer didn't recognize it and even after the password had been put in over 100+ times, it still made the password needed. Another is it can't just time limit specific programs and web sites, which is a big issue with me! I can't listen to music or check my email real quick. Anything I can do on the computer I can practically do on my phone anyway, so if you're going to implement parental controls at least use your brain enough to disable the internet on your child's phone. A lot of the times it doesn't even let me look at my e-mails anyway with out getting a password. Don't just assume that I'm trying to get parental controls disabled or something. You really think one kid that has a problem with the controls is going to make a difference? If anything, some guy from Microsoft is going to look at this and go "DANG! That kids got some good ideas" Anyway, if your kids a braniac and a computer wiz or plays any games or something, I don't really recommend parental controls. They'll really get him angry.

Good post . . needs page breaks.

Parents and their children have always had one thing between them, and nothing is going to change that. Parental control. We have all experienced it, believe it or not. Yes, even us old folks were kids once.  

It's not only that the parents don't want something bad happening to their children, it's their responsiblilty to make sure, as best they can, that it doesn't happen. In everyones else's eyes when something happens to a child the very first question is always, "where were their parents?".

There's a saying that sometimes covers this situation. Goes somthing like, "The older my parents get, the smarter they are."  

Oh, and parental control was here long before computers.   

Meh. Im a kid to. When I got a new Vista Laptop, my uncle loaded the thing with parental controls for everything. I just went to ctrl panel, went to change my account type, told my uncle that 'He needed to do the UAC thing so I could chnage my Psswd'
He entered it and hit ok. I changed myself to admin, disabled Parent Controls and delted his account. Just for being able to do that, he trusted me that I would be able to use the computer good enough, and he didnt put them back on (: