Is there one of the software packages that is clearly the best and/or highly recommended over the others?
I'm afraid that I haven't tried any of them, nor do I know of anyone who has tried any of them and reported back.
I sympathize with your situation. A few years ago my wife and I were very concerned that our children were watching too much television. My wife found an ingenious solution on the Internet...a device that added what amounted to a credit card reader to the television. Each child would get a card, and the cards could be programmed (by us) to limit them to a certain number of hours of television per week.
It sounded like an ideal solution. The kids could still watch television, but they would be limited to only their very favorite shows. They would also learn to budget their time as they would be in control of how to use their allotted hours.
It turned out to be a disaster. The children never got over the resentment of having the television locked. They felt that we didn't trust them. Lots of begging, whining and pouting went on. (And that was just from me....oh, wait, that's a different story...)
We hoped that they would get used to the arrangement in time if we remained firm. They didn't. It caused a constant state of tension.
I really do recommend that you have a look at Intego's Content Barrier. It is far more flexible than Apple's built-in Parental Controls, and it might make it so that you aren't bothered with your children being locked out of sites they need to access.
Good luck.
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Randy B. Singer
Co-author of The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th, and 6th editions)
Macintosh OS X Routine Maintenance
OS X Maintenance And Troubleshooting
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