My children each have their own MacBooks (hand-me-downs) for their own personal use. They do their homework assignments and research anything they want to know about. They use all the iLife applications, have blogs and create podcasts. We have a family .Mac (now called mobileMe) account allow them their own space to upload their creations to. It can very rewarding to watch their creative juices flow.

Leopard’s parental controls that are built right into the OS are perfect for our family. When they surf the internet there are many site that I would deem inappropriate for their ages. With parental controls I can block pop up windows and limited which sites they can navigate to. If you have ever type in a misspelling of a web site and been confronted with questionable content you know you do not want this to happen to your child.

Take a look in the parental control preference pane. If you have created a user for you child you can have control of all their internet time. For instance every piece of mail they receive comes to me first for approval. I can also enter who they are allowed to iChat with.

If they navigate to a web site that I haven’t yet approved they are confronted with a message stating they have to get an approval from an administrator to view the site. You even have the option to allow google searches or not.

My favorite is the settings for computer curfews. I set a limited amount of time they can use the computer per day. I can also set a curfew for when they are allowed to log on and a certain time of day they cannot use the computer. These curfews can be set differently for weekdays and weekends.

While my children find this annoying at times. I can’t rest assure that they are not being subjected to some on the online trash out there. If you need assistance settings these up, please let me know.

via Apple Support

Resolution

Important: Make sure the disc is not in use. Quit all applications that are using files on the disc.

1. Place the computer in sleep mode.

2. Press the Media Eject key at the top-right corner of the keyboard.

3. If that doesn’t work, drag the disc’s icon to the Trash.

4. If that doesn’t work, restart the computer, then hold down the mouse button.

5. To restart, choose Restart from the Apple menu.

Occasionally in OS X  file ownership and permissions get changed by applications and program installers.  When ownership and permissions get changed, things just don’t work as they should.

The symptoms might be programs quitting unexpectedly, preferences not being remembered, programs not launching, etc. This is where Repair Disk Permissions utility comes in.

To repair permissions, open the Disk Utility program found in the Applications/Utility folder on your hard drive. At the top of the Disk Utility window is a row of tabs.  Click on the First Aid tab.  On the left is a list of the disk and volumes mounted on your computer system.

You need to click to highlight your main hard drive. In the right window pane in the lower left click on the repair disk permission. After the repair you can restart your Mac. I would also recommend running this repair after each new software update runs.

Resetting the PRAM

This is a common Mac troubleshooting procedure, and fixes a multitude of software and hardware problems.

PRAM stands for Parameter RAM, and contains the following stored information:

Display and video settings such as refresh rate, screen resolution, number of colors

Time zone setting

Startup volume choice

Speaker volume

Recent kernel panic information, if any

You will not lose any data stored on your Macs drives, and system and application preferences besides the above will remain intact.

How to Reset your PRAM

Reboot your Mac

Hold down Command Apple – Option Alt – P – R

When you have heard the chime for the second time, release the keys and the Mac will boot as normal

Once your operating system has loaded, you may need to verify your time zone, startup volume, and volume settings using System Preferences

Do you really want your kids playing games on your Mac? Do you want them to get into your email or start your iChat? Probably not. They are never to young to have their own side of the Mac.

I have a computer in my kitchen ( I like having fast access to recipes) and on it I have a user account set up just for the kids. This is where the games live for the little ones. I even have a step stool at the counter so they can reach it. When a two year old steps up to the computer, I find it best to give them their own space on the computer and not let the mess around in mine. I know what you are thinking, “a two year old on your iMac”. You bet! I have one of the best software programs for toddlers. They love it and I am thankful to have something else to entertain those busy fingers with before they start emptying out all of my kitchen cabinets.

Apple’s Leopard and Tiger have excellent parental controls and I suggest using them. It doesn’t matter how old the kids are from tots to teens you really want them to have their own account and keep them out of yours. 

My older kids can login to their accounts and pick cutesy desktop pictures and set up their mail accounts. They can stock their own iPhoto library’s and download tunes into iTunes and use iChat to chat with friends.

With parental control built in I am able to control their mail, which website they can view, who they can iChat with, set computer time curfews, indicate which applications they can use and what system preferences they can change.

For younger kids you can simplify it even further by using the “Simple Finder” when setting up their accounts. Once they login all they are presented with is a desktop and large icons of programs they have permission to use.

I will explain how to set these accounts up and how to use the parental control in the next few issues.

If your Mac is running great right now thats terrific. But like most users, you will add new software, set prefs, move things around, currupt some files etc. Each user folder is unique in that it holds all the settings apart from other users. When something quits working right it is good to have a clean user folder on hand for testing. 

For instance you installed a new application or downloaded some files two days ago. Now when you double click on a file the computer locks up or an application crashes. What could be causing that? Is it the application or is it a setting the application created in your user folder.

If you have a test user account you can now login to that test user and repeat the same steps. If there are no crashes then you can narrow it down to something you just installed.

Go to the System Preference. Create a new user called Test and give it Admin privileges. Thats it.

My first Apple computer was a Performa 550 I think it was 1995. I didn’t start backing up my computers until ten years later. Macs were just reliable and never found the need for it. I still don’t run any virus software ( I will decuss that later.) 

As I have grown older and less of a rebel, I got that “you never know” feeling and started my backups. I have all my photos of the kids on my Mac and would just hate it if they were gone for good. And God forbid, an indoor football sends your iMac over the edge. Today Lepard makes it even easier backup using Time Machine. All you need is an external hard drive plugged into your Mac and let it roll.

After you plug in your new external drive, et up your Time Machine preferences located in the System Preferences Pane. Turn the slide bar to on. If you check the box “show time machine status in the menu bar it will give you easy access to your backups.

Look for a hard drive with at the very least the same amount of space as your Mac. The bigger the drive the further back in time you can go. USB drives can be a bit slow so if you have a Firewire 400 port or even better a Firewire 800 port on your Mac then get a Firewire drive. This will make for faster backups. Note that your first backup will seem like forever.

My favorite drives are NewerTechs MiniStacks. I like the look, the different capacities and the ability to use it as a startup drive if necessary. If you need a new wireless base station then backing up over Apple’s new Time Capsule is great.

When you have children around the house, I can’t stress enough the importance of protecting that important data living inside your Mac. Just imagine returning to your Mac to find that your hard drive has been renamed or moved to the trash.

While it is a good idea to have your user name set to logout after a period of inactivity there are other things you can do to simplify the act of protecting your data.

If you are like me, having children loose in the house can keep you from completing anything you sit down at the computer to do in just one sitting. You spend five minutes here, ten minutes there, etc.  Your computer would logout while you were away and you have to login the user name again each time you returned to the computer.

What I don’t enjoy is having to wait for my user to login each time I sit down. I have a lot of applications that automatically start up at login. This leaves me waiting too long before I am able to click around (time is precious around here).

Here is a helpful tip that will allow your computer to require a password to wake from a screen saver. This will keep your user name active for longer periods of time while hiding behind the screen saver and at the same time keep your Mac safe from little fingers.

Pay a visit to your System Preference, located in the dock or in your apple menu. Click on the Security Icon and change the following settings. Click the box next to the items (Require password to wake from sleep or screen saver, disable automatic login and log out after _ minutes of inactivity). You will need to set the number of minutes you want your computer to completely logout the current user.

The next thing you will need to do is return back to your System Preference (by selecting “Show All” and select the Desktop & Screen Savor icon.) Click on the Screen Savor tab in the top of the window. Down at the bottom of this window you can set your Screen Savor activation time.