Computer Spot

Looking at children these days, it kind of feels like they were born with an iPhone in one hand. Why, if you give them a BlackBerry or another kind of phone with actual buttons and keys, they keep trying to swipe their fingers across them and expecting them to spring to life.

That’s how used they are to technology. Needless to say, kids’ laptops these days make for a great idea. Not just because they’re going to play video games all the time or anything, but because theywill actually them learn well as well.

A lot of the time, parents have never heard of kids’ laptops. When they first chance upon them at a local electronics store, there are a little wonderstruck – what is it about a laptop designed for a kid that makes it different from one designed for a grown-up?

Well, some of the differences are rather common sense. For instance, you can’t get your kid a regular laptop and then expect him to be careful with it. Without a doubt, kids, when you place them in charge of anything, are going to be a little playful and rough with it.

So a child’s laptop is usually kind of toughened up – with a rugged and colorful exterior and a screen protector for the time your child decides to actually clamber on top of the screen in his enthusiasm to get to the bathroom.

Actually, if this were the only concern, you could easily buy a regular laptop and buy a protective shell for it.

But that isn’t the only kind of protection kids’ laptops need. Even if you do insulate it against all kinds of knocks and falls, how about the fact that a regular laptop has a very delicate moving device inside – the hard drive?

Hard drives aren’t really built for any abuse. Neither is a DVD drive. Kids laptops are built with solid-state hard drives – expensive storage devices that are made entirely of flash chips.

These are quite expensive, but you’ll find that your kid gets to keep his new laptop a lot longer this way.

As much as you would like to build protection and security into a kid’s laptop, what do you do about the weight? Even netbooks will tend to weigh at least 3 pounds. What do you do about that when even adults have trouble logging their laptops around sometimes.

They try to kiddie size everything on a child’s laptop. The one thing that makes a laptop quite heavy is its battery. They cut down battery size, and, to still keep the laptop usable over extended periods of time, they cut all kinds of other things to keep power consumption down. Kids’ laptops rarely have more than 10 inches.

What do kids love to do on their laptops more than anything else? It’s plain gaming, of course. You can get a child’s laptop built to handle this kind of thing. In fact, if you don’t, your child’s going to lose interest in it very quickly.

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There are some parents that worry non-stop about how much time their children spend watching television and playing things like video and computer games. This is a relevant concern, because too much can be bad for children.

Some suggest that children under two have no screen time and then that it be limited from then on. However, you also have to think about the world in which they are going to live when they get older.

Computers are in almost every home and are common in most workplaces. Allowing your children some time to play computer games can actually be a wise investment in their future.

Many children today go into kindergarten knowing the basics of using a mouse and starting and using simple programs on a computer. In fact, they may start doing some work at that age on a computer while they are at school.

Teachers will help children that do not know what to do, but if your children have some limited interactions with computer games on your home PC, they will already know what do and they will already know that learning computer games at school are going to be just as fun as what they would do at home.

What you want to so is to find computer games for kids that have learning potential. Today, there are many of them on the market.

Most of them are made just to help children learn things like the alphabet, counting, colors, basic logic skills, and computer dexterity. Some are just for fun, but they end up having a learning element to them as well.

Some are generic and some are made with characters that your children may know from TV like the Wiggles, Sesame Street, or whatever it is that they love.

Parents should limit the time children are playing computer games, and if at all possible, play along with them. This can be hard when both parents work and time is limited, but if you play with them, you are on top of what they are learning in computer games and you also know when they are ready for something more advanced.

It is also easy to get lost in doing a chore while your child plays and they end up being on the computer longer than you intended. Some play is good, but they should have limits on time playing games and when watching TV.

Remember that as children get older they are going to want to find computer games online. There are plenty of good ones, but it is also easy for them to wander away to sites that you may not like.

See what you can do to put parental controls on your computer and also on popular sites like YouTube and Facebook. You want to know what they see and you want to know that they cannot find things that are well beyond their years.

If they cannot follow rules you set up while playing games, limit or cut out time as punishment. They’ll soon learn to follow your computer games and online activity rules.

With the newspapers full of accounts to do with how children keep indulging in lurid messaging (that they call sexting) and bullying each other over the Internet, parents are completely worried.

What kind of Internet protection for kids is out there that can help them keep track and keep an eye on everything? How do they protect their children from making these kinds of mistakes and from being victims too?

This kind of parental software is quite new. And already, one out of two children has seen software of some kind sent after him that keeps tabs on his activities online. And it’s a growing market too. Only about three years ago, barely 15% of parents did this.

Of course, we’ve always had parental supervision software to keep an eye on our children’s activities on the computer. These days though, the home computer is old news. It’s the iPad and the smartphone that the young do all of their online work on – on Facebook and everything else.

Internet protection for kids though, doesn’t come cheap. It can cost as much as $80 a year. And for that, there is a lot they promise to do.

They’ll completely keep abreast of everything your child posts online and everything that shows up on your child’s social networking pages.

The surprising thing though is that it doesn’t matter where a child goes to access his social network – even a friend’s house. The software is completely able to keep track of everything.

The good thing is that these programs don’t attempt to spy on your child. In most cases, they work with your child’s permission and full knowledge.

These programs, by companies like Trend Micro and Symantec, want to make it clear to children that they truly are at risk and they need their parents help staying safe.

It’s so easy for children to do what the next child is doing – send graphic messages that they’ll regret one day or participate in bullying that they might get expelled for. The more you pay for these services, the more control you typically get.

Trend Micro’s $50-a-year offering will keep an eye out on all the imagery that goes in and out of your child’s online accounts and they will even keep an eye out for unpleasant keywords search for. Zone Alarm’s product costs $20 a year, and it will keep an eye on your child’s Facebook account for you. They will let you block unsafe chat rooms and do a number of other things.

If you know your tech really well, you can easily access a few free online resources to put together your own Internet protection for kids from sources such as Minor Monitor as well.

So there your kid is on the couch, being nice and quiet puttering about on the Internet on the laptop. He is a right before your eyes and not getting into any kind of trouble. Is he? Children under 15 do need your help learning stay safe.

They really haven’t understood enough about life to stay clear of on Internet. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children finds that while most parents do establish ground rules for how to be safe on the computer and have had talks about it all, they almost never look in regularly to see that their children really understand what they’ve said.

And one out of two children in America report that they don’t need any parental permission at all to get on the Internet and their parents never ask them to limit the time they spend online. These Internet safety tips for kids that follow should help. But they’ll only help if you check in on a regular basis.

Most children who get into trouble on the Internet have things go wrong the moment they give out personal information on Internet – their phone number or even the name of your school.

It’s not just that you need to tell your children to never give information out to anyone who asks. Often these days, they just disguise their intentions by putting out fake contests, sweepstakes or games on Facebook.

Anyone who wants to enter these needs to give out all kinds of information. Your children are fooled by the official-looking forms that go with these fun-sounding ventures. Most Internet safety tips for kids tell you to tell your children not to give out personal information. They never tell you the ways in which these requests come in.

The “Don’t give out personal information” rule can be surprisingly difficult to keep. For instance, what do you do if your child wants to learn to develop his own website? Most parents would look at this and completely approve.

What’s not to approve – it’s creative, and it requires a bit of hard work. However, do you realize that every domain name registration requires that you submit your address, e-mail ID and phone number, to be published to the whole wide world?

Of course, most kinds of domain names offer you a privacy option – for some money. Your child needs to learn why it is necessary to pay for this. And besides, there are some kinds of domain name TLDs that don’t even allow for privacy.

For instance, a .us domain name has no privacy option. A child needs to learn how to use these choices for his website.

Sometimes, Internet safety tips for kids can be surprisingly simple and still be very effective. For instance, a child needs to be sure to not use something that points to whether the child is a boy or girl. The name shouldn’t even point how old the child is.

With a few commonsense Internet safety tips for kids like these, safety isn’t really a challenge anymore.

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If you are looking for a quality laptop or notebook, you may think that you have to spend a lot of money to get one. Instead of shopping by price, you should instead shop by reputation.

Everyone has different experiences with different brands, especially when it comes to electronics, but there are some brands that perform better than others, especially in the lower price range.

Acer laptops may have their problems as each brand does, and for a lower end model, these are  models worth consideration when you shop for something for your children.

The Acer laptops are on the lower end of price for some of their models. If you want the smaller notebook size that is just for basic computer commands and surfing the Internet, they also have one on the lower end of price.

For the most part, this usually means the items is sub par, but that is not always the case with Acer laptops. In fact, those working in many stores I have personally visited say that they perform pretty well considering they are on the lower end of the price scale for certain models.

An Acer laptop may not be right for you, but if you want to get something for your kids, this may be the way to go. Both the laptop and the notebook versions are great in price for something that does not have to have a high amount of top end programs. Read the rest of this entry →

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Monitoring your kids’ use of the internet by sitting with them is the most ideal way to keep them away from all the threats possible online. But this isn’t possible all the time.

So, to make sure that your kids are safe using the internet when you aren’t around, there are a number internet safety rules that your kids should know.

1.    Follow the specific time to use the computer. Explain to them why there is a need to set internet time. Let them develop obedience as a virtue and a sense of responsibility for their actions.

2.    Never share personal information to strangers you meet online. These include: name, home address, phone number, email address, password, school information, bank account information, and credit card numbers. Online predators are everywhere and their main targets are your kids who are innocently giving their personal information that can put their safety on the line. Read the rest of this entry →

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Your kids are the primary target of internet-based threats like computer viruses, adware, and spyware through the websites they frequently visit and misleading information they receive.

This is the reason why, as parents, it is important to discuss with your kids how to surf the net safely and away from any internet-based threats.

Downloads

Downloading files from unknown source is one of the most common reasons why the computer is infested with viruses and spyware.

Free games, flash animations, bundled emoticons, jokes, screen savers, and even free spyware removal downloads are potentially unsafe. Read the rest of this entry →

Your kids’ email addresses may be bombarded by unsolicited junk emails or spam everyday. So it is very possible that they open emails and download attachments from unknown senders.

Since spam is known to be a growing source of computer viruses, your kids may be inviting internet-based threats unknowingly.

Thus, it is very important that they know what to do to avoid attracting junk mails and keep their computer free from viruses.

Teach your kids to protect their email addresses. Make sure they know that it is dangerous for them to share their email addresses to someone they don’t know through instant messaging, online chatting, and signing up to websites for access. Read the rest of this entry →

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Internet addiction isn’t common to parents and teachers; and it isn’t that widely recognized in the medical community as well. But it doesn’t mean that you can ignore it as a serious health condition.

Here are the things you should know about Internet addiction…

Internet Addiction Symptoms

There are several symptoms visible to kids with internet addictions. Physical symptoms include headaches and migraines associated with the use of the computer, carpal tunnel syndrome, backaches, neglect of personal hygiene, lack of sleep and inconsistent sleeping patterns, and dry eyes. Read the rest of this entry →

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Our access to information has never been as convenient. In ancient times, only young men were allowed to go to school and learn about philosophers and literature.

When the ultra-conservative Middle Ages came along, knowledge was left in the hands of the religious, and wouldn’t see a renewal until the Renaissance.

As the centuries passed, people were granted greater access to information, until our modern day scholars decided to make things easier for everyone.

From libraries stocking books in order, we moved to databases that stored information in a way that it could be stored, searched through, and retrieved. Read the rest of this entry →

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