I recently had a look at the Parental Control feature of OS X. This time round I’ll be having a look at the Windows 7 implementation of the same set of features and seeing how it compares to the Apple alternative.

Though we are looking at Windows 7 for this article, the features are very similar to those in Vista, and as you will see some of the features require an additional download and so are available on Windows Vista onwards.

Split personalities
The parental controls in Windows are really two part. Firstly within Windows 7 itself is the Parental Control feature. You can get there by simply typing parental controls in to the Start menu. However, Windows allows for 3rd party controls to be installed. The idea is that a company can easily integrate it’s filtering technology in to Windows and provide you with a better (more specific) service. Microsoft themselves provide a filtering control in the form of Windows Live Family Safety and it’s this feature that provides the web filtering component. You’ll need to download the Windows Live Family Safety filter provider to get the full benefit of the parental controls in Windows.

Go to http://download.live.com/familysafety and download the family safety component before you do anything else. Really, you’re kids will thank you for it later on.

Install Family Safety

It’s all about the game
The features in Windows 7 parental controls are, broadly speaking, very similar to those in Apples OS X. You can set time limits for the usage of a machine by a user, you can specify what applications they can or can’t use etc. There are however some noticable additions. As we all know Windows is one of the main gaming platforms, with kids, students and adults alike wanting constantly more realistic games. This leads to a concern that kids are being exposed to overly violent games. Because of this Microsoft have added the ability to restrict access to game titles based on the age rating, content type and title. It’s a great idea and as long as titles adhere to the standards, which most do, it works well. You can even blog those games which haven’t yet been certified. The ratings are determined by PEGI and our own BBFC and any “Games for Windows” title will have an age certificate.

Minesweeper is corrupting kids, clearly.

You can also prevent your child using the machine with time limit restrictions. However you are limited to just specify a start and stop time, outside of which your child can’t logon. Compare this to Apples implementation where you also have a feature allowing a child to use a machine for x number of hours in a day and you realise that Apples approach is bit more grown up. Allowing access between 4pm and 9pm may lead to a child sat on the PC for 5 hours a day with the MS solution. However Apples solution allows you say “you can use the computer for an hour after school” and specify one hours usage between 4pm and 9pm.

Website filtering
A big strength, and also a big weakness, of the parental controls in Windows 7 is the website blocking feature. This isn’t included as standard and as mentioned above you have to install an addon (albeit a fairly straight forward process). Once loaded from the Start menu the Windows Live Family Safety addon integrates with the Parental Control control panel applet so you manage everything from one place. You do however require a Microsoft Passport account (ie Messenger or Hotmail or XBox Live logon) to use it.

Once installed you do, however, get a wealth of control over the activities of your children. You can restrict their access to websites by category (Adult, Social networking, web mail etc) as well as specifying individual sites they can or can’t access. You can also restrict access to certain contacts, preventing or allowing them from contacting certain people though only through Hotmail or Messenger. You can also view a comprehensive list of sites accessed by your child and block or allow those sites at the click of a button. It also, unlike Apples OS X, doesn’t appear to block access based on the domain name, but rather specific pages and/or content. For example, you can access the CBeebies website (www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies) but not the BBC News site (www.bbc.co.uk/news). This provides a far more reliable blocking capability.

One feature I really liked was that if you allowed access to only the Child Friendly category of sites, Internet Explorer shows your child a list of common child friendly sites, including Cbeebies, CBBC, and others, making it nice and easy to access them.

Common child friendly sites

And finally
One other nice feature is that when your child inevitably accesses a site that they aren’t allowed to they are given a few options. One of which is to “Ask in person”. They go off and find you, ask you if they can access this website, and then all you have to do is to type in your password in to the box on the screen and that site is unblocked for them. It saves them having to log off and then get you to log on to make changes.

Overall
Overall, while the features are very strong, the actual implementation of the parental controls just isn’t very smooth. Part of this isn’t directly Microsofts fault. As a result of numerous court cases they have been encouraged to unbundle features from Windows and as a result you have to download Messenger, Family Safety, and the rest as seperate applications. However, even so, the process of installing, configuring and implementing the features could be made much easier. However with a strong cup of coffee and a modicum of computer savvy you should be able to get things working.

Though the filtering abilities are much better in Windows, I still prefer the Apple approach just because of the small things; a simple finder window allows young kids to access the machine without being overwhelmed, access time is more realistic in OS X as well. The game blocking abilities of Windows 7 parent controls may be more suitable for older children though.

Really, which one you use will depend on which machine you have or you plan on buying.