Parents take control of Windows Vista

Published: July 29th, 2005

By Lawrence Abrams

This preview is based off the Microsoft's Windows Vista Beta 1 release.
Due to this, features and images shown and discussed in this preview may
be drastically changed, or
not exist at all in the final release.

As many of you know, the first beta of
Microsoft's next generation operating system called Windows Vista has been
released to a select number of beta testers. As this release is considered
a public release
we have the ability to show off some of its new features that we feel you would
find interesting while we test the product. If you, like many others, have
been going from site to site reading about all the features included with Vista,
you will
predominantly
be
seeing articles about it's
new
glass
user interface (see through windows),
IE7's support for RSS feeds, and the new interface. Though these are important
facets, I know that most of my readers care more about the meat of the product
and the hopes of having a secure environment that gives you some degree of
control
on
how
programs
are run and who can run them.

If you are one of these people, then I have good news for you. The latest
incarnation of Windows has introduced a new control panel called Windows Parental
Controls.
This control
panel will allow you to create restrictions on what games your children can
play based on the game's ratings, the type of game, or the name
of the
game.
It
also allows
you to turn on activity logging that will log what a particular user does on
the
computer whether that be visiting an Internet site or running a program. These
settings must be enabled by an Administrator of the machine, so if you do not
share that accounts password, you
can
enforce the
rest
of
the users
who use the computer.

The Parental Control Option Screen

In the control panel is a new icon called Windows Parental Control. From this
icon you can change the settings for various user accounts in how they are
monitored and in what games they will be able to play. The interface is fairly
intuitive giving you the ability enable or disable parental control for a particular
user, enable or disable Activity Reporting, and restricting what games they
can play based on game's rating, content, or the game itself. A nice feature
is also the ability to choose between ESRB (entertainment software ratings
board)
or the PEGI (Pan european gaming information) ratings system allowing parents
to choose the rating system that best fits their values.

The image below shows my Beta account that
I am using for testing in which I have enabled
Parental
Controls and Activity Reporting.

Windows Parental Control Main Option Screen

As you can see the the interlace is fairly intuitive. You select
a user and then apply the various controls you want to restrict for that user.
To restrict a user based on the games rating or content you can click on the
Games rating restrictions button. This will produce a screen
broken up into the two images below.

Restrict content based upon the game rating using the ESRB rating system

Restrict content based on the game content.

The interface allows you to really dig down as to what
types of games you would like your users to be able to play on this computer.
When
choosing
game ratings, the highest level you allow, will allow all games of lower ratings
as well. You can fine tune it further by saying games of Mature and lower are
allowed, but as long as they do not contain references to drugs. As of now
there is not much information as to how the content of the games will be made
available
to the operating system to use as restrictions

Last but not least, if you wanted to specifically ban a game
for a particular user account you can select the Block Specific Games button
which will list the games installed on your computer and give you the ability
to always block or allow a specific game, or let the restrictions be based
on the games ratings. The image below shows an
example of those options:

Block Specific Games
Screen

Final Thoughts

Though the Windows Parental Control options come as a welcome
addition to concerned parents, there is still a lot of information not available.
It seems to me that in order for the content restrictions to work, the game
manufacturers must develop their games with this system in mind. Unfortunately,
for some game developers this may not be in their best interest to do so. As
more information about how this process is revealed we will be sure to let
you know.

The Activity Monitor, though it appears that it will be useful,
does not seem to be in full effect in this release of Vista. Even though I
had activity reporting turned on for my Beta account, I could not find the
logs for that user. If I get more information, or if someone know where to
find the logs, I will let everyone
know.

Another feature which I think was a mistake
not to include, was the ability for administrators to actually restrict specific
programs from running or users from visiting certain sites. A large concern
for parents are their children chatting whether it be over instant messaging
or
online
chat
rooms
with strangers.
An
ability to restrict users from visiting sites or using certain applications
would definitely help to alleviate some of these concerns. It is still Beta
1, though, so maybe new features like these will be added for future releases.

Overall,
though, I think Microsoft did a great job with this very important
addition to the feature set of Windows. Having this type of granular control
over what users are doing on the computer will definitely
make
a
lot of parents
feel
better
with their children using the computer.