The Internet isn't exactly an innocent wonderland. There's some pretty harsh stuff on there and it's the last thing you'd want a child to see. That's why parental control software is in such hot demand. The problem is, only a handful of parental control products work the way they're supposed to. When PCSecurityShield announced it was launching Parental Control Version 5.0, we were excited to see how it worked. The company is known for it's dedication to quality technology. We wanted to see exactly what they were bringing to the parental control arena. Here's the scoop...
What's New?
- On-the-fly dynamic web filtering.
- Caching of previously classified URLs for performance enhancement.
- 1 year of free updates.
Our Favorite Feature:
We really like that Parental Control Version 5.0 comes with one year of free updates. If new technology becomes available within the next twelve months, you don't need to worry about paying for upgrades. It's all included in the purchase price.
Parental Control Version 5.0 Features:
- Active Content Recognition
- On-The-Fly Content Filtering
- Content Category Tagging
- Blacklist Database
- Network Static List
- Cache Categorization
The Parental Control Version 5.0 Experience:
The download and installation of Parental Control 5.0 was a problem at first. When we first tried installing it we couldn't get the program setup to run. We were able to download it just fine, but actually getting the download to install was an entirely different story. That's when we contacted customer support. You'll read more about that below.
After about an hour or two of wondering what was wrong with the software, we were able to figure it out. It was a zip file issue, so we can't really hold it against PCSecurityShield. We have to blame Vista or WinRAR. We're just not sure which one yet.
Learn from our experience – if you're running Vista or have WinRAR on your PC and you get an error message that says "download already complete" when installing the Parental Control software, open up your zip program and manually unzip the Parental Control install file. Then click the setup.exe file contained within that archive and you'll be good to go.
Once we began the setup process the complete installation took less than five minutes. After install our system was restarted and while it seemed to take a bit longer than usual to get up and running, the actual performance of our PC when it was operating didn't seem impacted at all.
I have to say, even though we ran into problems getting Parental Control Version 5.0 up and running on our system, it was definitely worth it in the long run. It is one of the better parental control software products we've seen.
Although it took a bit of navigating to figure out how to work the program, we found it very easy to use once we were able to launch the interface. Parental Control was able to block offensive sites, yet we didn't run into any instances of it blocking websites we actually needed to access. This is a huge plus since many parental control products run into glitches, blocking sites that don't really need to be blocked. Overall, we have to give the technology and the product itself a thumbs up.
Parental Control Version 5.0 Pricing:
- 1-year license is $29.99.
- 2-year license is $44.99.
PCSecurityShield Customer Service:
We think it's great that PCSecurityShield offers free support to its customers. That's something that not many software companies are willing to do.
Our first contact with support happened on a day when they were a bit understaffed and we ran into a few frustrations. However, when we tried again on a different date the process went much more smoothly. Our online chat session was answered immediately and the rep researched our questions and provided us with knowledgeable answers.
When calling PCSecurityShield to get support for their Parental Control software we were put in contact with a very helpful and knowledgeable technical representative. He was friendly and professional and addressed our concerns immediately.
Email support was prompt, responding the same business day. They advised us to call technical support directly to resolve the installation issue. That was a breath of fresh air since most of the email "tech support" you run into nowadays consists of "canned" answers that might or might not address the question at hand.
Overall, we were thrilled to find live tech support that wasn't only accessible, but was also free.
Upside:
Free updates for one year, great price, advanced technology.
Downside:
Some users might run into software compatibility glitches.