After reading about the new parental timer on the Xbox 360, user hyperfamilyman asked how to access the timer on Windows Vista to limit PC time. I haven’t worked with Vista yet, though we will get our first chance next week when my daughter’s laptop PC arrives. But a look at the Windows Vista Help site indicates a fairly simple setup for time controls. Within the parental controls, you’ll find a Time Limits link. To get to the Parental Controls, click on the Start icon at the lower left of the screen, click on Control Panel, then click on Parental Controls. When you click on the Time Limits link on the Parental Controls console, you’ll see a grid like the one pictured. You can control how much time each or every child spends on the computer, or you can limit the amount of time during certain parts of the day that they are on the computer. You can designate blocks of time as Allowed or Blocked. If the time limit is hit, the kid is automatically logged off and the computer screen returns to the accounts log-in page; the computer doesn’t turn off. The controls look simple enough to use. The bigger question is when do you want to use them? I think it’s better to start out trusting your kids with verbal limits. If they don’t work, then it may be good to have these controls at your fingertips. Just remember, unless every account is password-protected, including the administrator account, your tech-savvy kids will be able to change these settings just as easily as you are.
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How to record video in Windows Vista
Love Vista? Hate missing TV? Then we’ve got a treat for you. Windows Media Center’s PVR features will help you catch every last movie, superhero drama and sporting disaster – and archive the lot for safekeeping.Don’t miss out on your favourite TV programmes
1. If you have Vista Premium, Business or Ultimate, Windows Media Center comes pre-installed. Click on Vista’s Start button and the main menu will show Media Center as an option. Media Center is an overlay; you can switch between it and the Windows desktop at any time.
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Windows Live emerges from beta
SEATTLE - After a trickle of updates and “betas” bearing the Windows Live moniker, Microsoft Corp. is ready to start promoting its official package of free desktop programs for e-mail, instant messaging, blogging and sharing photos. The programs are “essentially a free upgrade for Windows,” said Brian Hall, general manager of Windows Live at Microsoft. The package includes Windows Live Mail, which can grab messages from multiple free Web-based e-mail accounts, including Microsoft’s Hotmail, Google Inc’s Gmail and AOL e-mail. The new package, to launch Tuesday, allows PC users to read and respond to mail even when they’re not online, just as Outlook Express, which Microsoft has phased out, did. Its Windows Live Photo Gallery lets users manipulate and organize digital photos and upload them to Flickr, a photo-sharing site owned by Yahoo, and to Windows Live Spaces, Microsoft’s own blogging and social networking site. The package also includes Live Writer, for writing blog posts, the Live Messenger instant-messaging program and Live Family Safety, parental controls for Web surfing at home. The applications aren’t much different from test versions previously available. What’s new is the spotlight Microsoft plans to shine on the programs. Hall said the company has planned “one of the largest online advertising campaigns at Microsoft,” with plans for 10 billion Web ad impressions on Microsoft’s MSN sites and third-party sites, including the social networking site Facebook, in which Microsoft bought a 1.6 percent stake last month. Microsoft’s Windows group will be marketing Windows Live alongside its latest Vista operating system during the crucial holiday shopping season. Matt Rosoff, an analyst at the independent research group Directions on Microsoft, said this marketing push is indicative of divisions within Microsoft, between the old guard running the MSN online business and the Windows Live group. “Windows Live is about making Windows better by tying it to online services,” and thus driving more people to buy Windows computers, he said. MSN “is still the old business model,” of generating revenue with Web advertising based on online applications that don’t connect to Microsoft’s desktop software. The world’s largest software maker also took steps to make its Web-based services, like Hotmail, more coherent, and to rein in the number of products and Web sites it tagged with the “Live” brand. “We’ve made big, big steps in this release,” Hall said. “But we still have an opportunity to make it simpler, and we will. We’re working on it.” On the Net:
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Make your PC Vista perfect
With Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system now in stores around the world, lots of PC users are wondering whether their machines are up to the task of running it. One way to find out is to read the “minimum requirements” notes on the side of the Windows Vista box. But few take this seriously. So what do you really need in your computer to be a happy Windows Vista user? Microsoft says that your PC should have at least a 1 gigahertz (GHz) processor, 512 megabytes of system memory (RAM) for Home Basic and 1 GB for other editions, at least 15 GB of free hard drive space and a graphics card that supports DirectX 9 and has 128 MB of onboard RAM. Few who have used Vista for any length of time, however, would consider running it for long on such a bare-bones machine. The result would be intolerable delays, constant disk swapping resulting in more delays, and a virtual inability to do any serious multitasking. Here’s a quick rundown of the major system components that an ideal Windows Vista system should contain.
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