Thanks Scotty, can you suggest the best parental filter to buy for you yo install for us ? Also, any brands / features better than the rest for a backing up the hard drives ?
Thanks

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Overall the parental filter in Leopard and Snow Leopard (apple's latest two versions of their operating system) are very good. There is a flaw in Snow Leopard's partenal controls but that usually only occurs if your are migrating data from an older version of the operating system. It's pretty rare so I wouldn't be concerned with that so much.

It limits time and content very well.

If you feel the need for a higher level of monitoring then there is Spectorsoft. It's $99 and overkill for most parents so I only recommend it in extreme cases...daughters stripping for their boyfriends over iChat, sons selling drugs through facebook, downloading illegal movies etc... I've seen it all.

For windows there are several filters out there. Netnanny and CyberSitter seem to be popular choices but I don't support Windows so you're on your own with that side of things.


In the end we have to remember two things.

1. Kids are smarter than us.
2. Nothing beats good parenting.


But boy it sure is tough.

As far as backing up your hard drive, time machine (which is built in to OS X) is very good and rarely fails. In other words, on the Mac side, you have everything you need already.