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Special News
ComputerTime 3.0 is coming! Get a sneak peak at it with our public Beta. See below.
Other Resources
In This Issue
- Five Ways ComputerTime Will Help You This Summer
- Let ComputerTime help you and your kids enjoy a summer full of sunshine and sanity.
- Managing Downtime Over the Summer
- Vacations, cookouts and other events will keep you busy for some of the time. But don't let the lazy days in between be spent in front of the screens.
- ComputerTime 3.0 Limited Beta
- More than one computer in your home that your children share? ComputerTime is about to get easier to configure with one set of limits across the network.
Five Ways ComputerTime Will Help You This Summer
ComputerTime is here to make your life easier. For starters, here are five ways that it could do that:
- New ComputerTime 3.0 will ease administration of limits on multiple computers so that kids can move between computers with one set of limits.
- Time-of-Day limits can be used to block out the times of the day that you want the kids to go outside!
- Daily limits can be set to make sure that they don't plop themselves down for too long.
- Time Tokens can be given to the kids as rewards for helping out with yardwork, doing chores, or in exchange for them getting some exercise. Let them earn their time to use the computer.
- It's a great value, whether you are buying it new or upgrading, this way you can still have money to buy your $4/gallon gasoline to get you to the beach!
Managing Downtime Over the Summer
Are you going on a big family vacation? Maybe Disney World, a week at the beach, or visiting some great National Parks? Perhaps you will just dot your summer calendar with lots of weekend trips. That still leaves a lot of days when the kids will just be hanging out and complaining to you that they're bored.
Actually, most kids don't complain so much about being bored. They just go into a daze in front of the computer or another screen — for hours. Unchecked screen time steals hours away that kids should be going outside, playing games with other kids in the neighborhood, exploring the woods, riding around on bikes, and hanging out at the house with the swimming pool in the neighboorhood.
You've probably set a Daily Limit. Make the most of ComputerTime's flexible limit settings and also set Time-of-Day limits. For example, let them be on between 6am-8am, noon-1pm, and 7pm-9pm. That gives them a 4-hour block the morning and a 6-hour block in the afternoon where they should be doing other things.
Parents need some peace in the summertime to get work done. Without school there to take the kids away so that you can have peace, the burden is now on you to keep them out of the house for at least 6 hours so you can focus on getting things done.
Also, consider a reward system. Try giving them no time at all, or a baseline of some small amount of time (like 30 minutes a day), and then let them earn Time Tokens . Chores done? Here is a 30 minute Time Token. Went outside and played with your friends for 2 hours? Here is a 1 hour Time Token. Watch out for negotiations though, especially the one that goes, "Let me on now and I'll do my chores later."
ComputerTime 3.0 Public Beta
We really appreciate the dedicated beta testers that have helped so far and, thanks to them, ComputerTime 3.0 is looking good and should be released soon.
First you should know what beta means. A beta version is an early version that we've built and are letting you try before the software is officially released. We're still putting in new features, testing it, and making sure it's running smoothly. If you use the beta, then you understand that it's a work in progress, and you might run across a feature that has some glitches.
Why use the beta? You benefit by taking advantage of the new features sooner. We benefit by getting your feedback and any reports of problems so we can fix them before the rest of the world gets it. By doing so, you really help us deliver a better product to you in the end!
Do you like living on the frontier? Great! Hop on over to the ComputerTime 3.0 Beta page where you can learn more and download the beta version.
Here are some more incentives:
If you're already using ComputerTime 2.0 on a single computer, you'll enjoy better performance and less conflicts with other security software.
If you have been using the Family Pack (ComputerTime on more than one computer), and you have your computers connected on a network, then you'll really enjoy the new ability to share one set of limit profiles across your network.
A customer that was using ComputerTime 2.0 says this after upgrading to the ComputerTime 3.0 beta:
"I want to congratulate you with this new version. I really had problems before. My children could go from one computer to the other and still get more computer time than I was happy with. I also needed to keep tokens for each computer. The administration work of those was not easy. Now the children can access all four computers without surpassing the time limits we have arranged and I keep only one register of tokens. By the way, installation worked perfectly."
So give it a try and then let us know how it's working out for you!
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