Start > Control Panal > User Accounts > Parental Controls... which is at the left lower corner of that page. Accessing the Parental Controls site should give you the options you seek. Anne

Hi, snidely, I appreciate the continued food for thought re: my Windows user account password situation. :-) :-) OTOH, I'm not sure your comments reflect the conventional wisdom (at least in the online articles I've been reading, as I try to keep an open mind about these things): 1. Just because "anyone wishing entry can easily enter" doesn't mean one should make it easy for the attackers. "Anyone wishing entry can easily enter" your home and/or car as well. Are you saying you yourself, therefore, never lock your car doors or the door and windows of your home ? Are you saying your email account password is "password" ? Most people say, "Make it as hard as possible for the hackers to get at your information." I tend to agree. 2. You're right -- I don't back up my phone conversations. But not backing up emails goes against just about everything I've ever read on basic email safety/security. We all have emails that we would surely not miss if they were gone for good. Apparently, none of yours is very important. You may be one of those "read and delete" types of email readers. That's fine. (In fact, that's the way I am with my RSS feeds.) But... many other people have important information in email messages, in saved online files, etc. That's why such online services as Google, Hotmail/Skydrive, etc. have such large storage to begin with, no ?.... So that people can keep things they want/need to keep. And the email companies themselves back up your email as a precaution and advise users to do the same (via forwarding to second account, using offline client, etc.). 3. I'm not so much concerned about someone getting by Aunt Helen's email address as I am someone hacking into my account and using my email address to send something to her (virus, porn, phishing email, etc.). If my contacts see a message coming from me (or presumably so), they're more likely to open it. That could spell trouble. Again, it's a matter of basic precautions against stuff we don't want to deal with. And that's another reason why I'm moving in the direction of having all my contacts/emails offline.... so that anyone getting into my online webmail account/interface will find nothing there to work with: no contact addresses, no emails stored, no online files, etc. Everything will be offline and backed up further on CD. 4. I'm not so sure the myriads of people who have had their email accounts compromised, emails deleted, contacts bombarded with spam, porn, virus-laden emails, etc. -- and many of whom have written about the nightmare of trying to recover the account -- and the emails) -- would call it all a "slight inconvenience." Again, Mat Honan's recent experience is frightening, and so are the stories of many others. Anyway, I truly appreciate your perspective. I always want to hear the different sides of an issue so I know I'm not missing an 'angle' on whatever I'm thinking about. :-) Btw.... how did you know I have an Aunt Helen ? ;-)

You may be confusing update with upgrade and clean install. The terminology here is confusing unless you study all the links in the advisor. Run it again and it wouldn't hurt to print out the installation instructions either. It is about a 2 hour install process. Partly because it retrieves and installs ms updates. Now. Get the upgrade. You start with XP running, insert the CD, and follow instructions and it removes XP, formats the C:\drive, removes partitions you don't need, fixes up the disk one way or another and then installs w/7. Very simple. This is effectively gives you a clean install because the W/7 is NOT installed on top of the W/XP. I don't recall the word clean in any of the literature related to this. I do believe it is just a slang term. You may have an option to start the comp with the W/7 upgrade disk (not with XP), click Custom (advanced), drive options (advanced). Then I guess you can reformat the stupid thing yourself. Why you would want to do this is beyond me. My old HP DC7600 SFF refurb ($125) :-) had 1 Gig Ram - I upped it to 4G, the max it would take, and installed the 64bit W/7. It had W/XP Pro/32 bit. Runs fine but I don't do heavy stuff. At the end there is a disk cleanup procedure if you wish. So: Run the advisor again. Read all the links plus the one RC provided. Slide all your Dot.Exe's to a thumb drive. Print the install directions. Use the W/7 Upgrade. Go for it, man. Lettuce Know.

I'm only 3 weeks into using Vista so I hate to give too many secrets out until I'm more sure of myself and what security I'm screwing up. But you can make a shortcut, right click and select properties & then follow the security tab to the differenct permissions. Take ownership and change away on the permissions. Eventually after two or three ways I can fairly much stop that you dont have permission to do this popup.... some programs you have to do it to the program folder also so the program can access and write within its own folder. My Toshiba laptop came with Vista and Quickbooks... maybe a trial, I havent tried it... it actually links to a web-addy. Here is a link that might be useful: (quickbooks - toshiba style)