One of the big advantages of Windows Vista over Windows XP is the addition of Parental Controls to the user account management.

With Vista you can put limits on various things such as the times your kids are allowed to use the internet, what kind of website they’re allowed to visit, specific websites they’re not allowed to visit, and the types of games they can play.

You have as little or as much control over these things as you want. You can let Windows manage it all for you, say by filtering websites based on their ratings or allowing games based on their ratings. You don’t have to worry about the specifics.

Or you can go in and specifically allow or block any website, game or program you want.

These controls are all accessed from the user accounts section in the Control Panel, which is available from the Start menu.

If you don’t already have separate user accounts set up for your kids, now is the time to do it – and then activate the parental controls for them so you don’t have to worry about what they’re doing on the computer when you’re not watching.

When you originally set up your computer, it probably asked you to enter one or more user names as part of the setup process.

Most people only enter a single name here, and everyone that uses the computer winds up using that same user account.

But setting up multiple accounts lets each user have their own documents, their own desktop pictures, their own sound effects and many other things. So if you can’t stand the desktop wallpaper that your 12 year old daughter puts on the computer, you don’t have to see it when you use it.

Creating multiple user accounts also gives you more control over security settings because you can set up new accounts as “limited” users. This means those users can’t make changes to Windows, can’t install certain types of software and many other limitations.

If you’re running Windows Vista, you can also turn on parental controls for your kids accounts, which will limit what they can access on the internet.

New user ID’s are setup through the Control Panel, in the Users section. It’s not a complicated process, but if you’re not entirely confident you can work your way through it, you may want to take a look at my Online Security Toolkit where I explain how to do it in detail.