In our efforts to provide our children with the right start in life, parents usually assume that it's necessary to buy the best. The 'nothing-is-too-much-for-my-princess' approach. Anything less than the best would threaten their future, right? This is fine when you've buying formula milk or shoes - the difference between the cheapest and most expensive isn't enormous. But when it comes to computers, a desire to buy the most expensive can be seriously traumatic for your wallet.
So what do you really need? If you're buying a new computer system you really needn't spend more than £799 including VAT. For that, you'll get a machine which is suitable for the whole family - it'll be able to play all but the most recent 3D games, will allow everyone to surf the Internet and make light work of word processing and spreadsheets.
What about a laptop? For a family with very young children, they make a bad choice because everything is in a single box. If a drink gets spilled on a computer's keyboard you can replace it. Spill fruit juice into a laptop, and it could destroy it.
For families with young kids, the fact that laptops are easily movable is another problem as they're much more likely than a desktop PC to get knocked to the floor and end up in pieces.

For more advice on choosing the perfect computer system for your family please contact us and we will be more than happy to discuss your requirements further.

Luckily, Windows takes your kids' online safety seriously. More specifically, Internet Explorer - the Windows program that lets you browse pages on the World Wide Web - can be set to block any site you decide contains inappropriate material.
Open Internet Explorer and click the Tools menu, then choose Internet Options. Select the Content tab, then click the Enable button under the Content Advisor heading.

The first screen of the Content Advisor presents you with a set of categories including Language, Nudity, Sex and Violence. If you click on one of these you can then move the slider at the bottom of the screen and adjust how tolerant you'd like Internet Explorer to be. You can, for example, ban all sites that contain even the mildest expletives but allow ones with a bit of fighting. When you're done, click Apply.
You can also use the Content Advisor to create a list of approved internet sites. Your children will be able to visit these freely, but if they venture off the list they'll be prompted for a password to continue. With some discussion, this is a very good way of ring-fencing your children's internet use.

To do this, open the Content Advisor and click on Approved sites. In the following window, you can enter all the allowed Web site addresses. After you've entered one of your approved Web addresses, click Always. To bar any specific Web site, enter its address and click Never.
Creating a whole list of approved sites can be a laborious process, though - and unless you can provide your kids with enough variety in the content, they'll get bored and restless.
To make things easier, you can download ready-made lists of approved sites generated by official organisations.
With the Content Advisor window open, click General and choose 'Find Rating system'. You'll then be take to a page on Microsoft's Web site. In the right-hand column, you'll see links to two rating systems, provided by the organisations ICRA (the Internet Content Rating Association) and SafeSurf.
To use these lists, you'll need to download a very small file and save it to the directory C:\ Windows\System32. Both systems provide exact instructions on how to do this. When you've saved the relevant file, click the Rating System button. After that, click Add, highlight the file you've just downloaded (it will end in .rat) and then click OK. Finally, apply the changes. Be warned, though - we found these systems were very restrictive, blocking access to many seemingly innocuous sites.
In order to use Content Advisor, you'll be prompted to come up with a password. Choose carefully. If the password you choose is too obscure, and you may forget it - leaving you blocked from sites and banned from changing Content Advisor's settings.
Aside from your children stumbling upon inappropriate Web sites, the main ways they may come into contact with unsavoury subject matter is through unsolicited e-mail, known as 'spam' (our anti-spam emails tutorial gives more information of this). The best way to limit this is to use a spam blocker - a program that recognises spam e-mail and prevents it from appearing in your Inbox.
Microsoft's Web-based Hotmail e-mail service is very popular, and offers excellent spam-blocking features. The most effective protection is to set Hotmail to accept e-mail only from an approved list of senders. You can decide who the approved list of senders are beforehand with your children.

Barely a month goes by without more news stories concerning children being targeted on the Internet by adults with suspicious motives. For parents dealing with the Internet for the first time, the idea of letting their kids loose on the Web can feel like asking them to pick their way across the M5 motorway. The reality is far less daunting.
If your children visit the Web sites we discuss in this section, then they are at very little risk of coming into contact with anything or anybody they might find harmful.
If they use search engines to research schoolwork, there is a slightly increased chance of your children finding Web sites with adult content. You can reduce this risk by setting up Internet Explorer as we've already discussed, but also by using child-friendly search tools. A number of dedicated child-friendly search engines exist. Try out http://yahooligans.yahoo.com, www.ajkids.com and www.kidsclick.org. Mainstream search engines such as www.google.co.uk and www.altavista.com also provide family filters to safeguard young users from unsuitable content, though we wouldn't advise you rely on these solely without supervision.
The biggest source of risk to kids comes from using Internet chat rooms. These sites allow users to have potentially unsupervised text conversations in real time - just like a 'proper' conversation. This can pose a threat to children, as there's little way of knowing if the person that they are chatting to is in fact who they say they are.
So how do you keep your children safe in chat rooms?

There are two answers. First, make
sure that if you allow your kids to visit them, that the chat rooms they visit are 'moderated’. This means that they have a human being continuously monitoring conversations to make sure nothing dubious goes on. Moderators can take immediate action, tracing the addresses of
offenders or barring them from the site. Sites without moderators lack this necessary safety feature and are inherently more 'unsafe'.
Second, before your child uses any kind of chat site, make sure you discuss with them the different kinds of risks that they may be up against. There's no need to frighten your children, but they do need to know the types of questions or requests that should ring alarm bells. For more on this, see the section below, 'Know The Danger Signs'.
As chat rooms are public places where the risk of detection is higher, paedophiles tend to move conversations with children on to a more private one-to-one basis. This can take the form of using private chat rooms, or exchanging details so they can converse further via e-mail or instant messaging software.
As a parent, you should also be aware of instant messaging. Because of the immediacy this offers, children can easily fall into traps set up by unscrupulous adults. To help both you and your children understand how to stay safe when using instant messaging, visit www.fkbko.co.uk. But don't for a moment think instant messengers are synonymous with risk. Millions of people all over the world use them - and they're thoroughly good fun. And before two people can converse using an instant messaging program, they must both agree to add each other to their list of contacts. One party can't just pounce and start chatting without the recipient accepting.
Remember that your children can block people from conversing with them in Instant Messenger.
The procedure will vary from system to system but, in the most popular chat and messenger application, Microsoft's Windows Messenger, it's pretty simple. All you need do is right-click a contact in the program's main window, and select Block. Alternatively, click Tools, Options, Privacy, and select the person you'd prefer to avoid. When you've done that, click Block and OK.

• Children may be asked for a private chat room conversation or a photograph.
• Someone may take an unhealthy interest in the child's home or school life, teasing out details that can be exploited. They may also seek to gain direct contact details.
• The new friendship must be kept a secret. This helps the paedophile evade detection but also fosters a sense of mutual trust between the adult and the child.
• Eventually, the adult will begin initiating more intimate conversations or introduce sexual ideas and words into a conversation.

The above is not the be-all and end-all of things that can be classed as danger signs to your kids online safety but shouild be enough to give you some ideas of warning signs to lookout for.