Any advice for a simple way to set up a PC for a 7 year old to use safely online?

She is 7 years old & needs to use one for homework, among other things.

We have got hold of a used laptop (Win.XP/Firefox) that we are planning for her to have/use in the livingroom with us.

How do you control your kids PC use?

Cheers.

Here, might be useful.

I used K9 it was OK

Try Open DNS

There is a free version and more fully featured subscription offerings

I use OpenDNS as well. The advantage is that if you set it up on your router, it will work with all connected devices, such as Wii’s, DS,s etc. And you also get a log of usage.

In all honesty, anything on the PC can be circumvented. If it were me I’d build a proxy server, but I appreciate that’s non-trivial. (-:

OpenDNS is a good idea.

open DNS – please explain, their website had me going round in circles

it’s a remote server that can apply rules to different machines all running off the same router – is that right ?

funnily enough, was reading a computer mag the other day that said there’s a good free beta from microsoft (family safety, I think – part of some bigger free suite they do)

If you’re on TalkTalk, as them about their parental controls work. It doesn’t live in the PC, but in the communication network. Got to be easier than anything on a PC.

open DNS – please explain, their website had me going round in circles

it’s a remote server that can apply rules to different machines all running off the same router – is that right ?
No, one router, one set of rules, that’s the main limitation, but you get protection for everything that uses the router (or you can set it up on each pc). Rules are set up based on the IP address of the router.