Computer technology has me buffaloed these days.  I can use my fight simulator and send and receive e-mails and write on Word Perfect but little else.  Back in the olden days I could write programs and I knew how things worked.  

I was cleaning our old files the other day and I found this.  One of the computer gurus in town was asked to write a short piece for our local paper about the internet.  But he wasn't a writer.  He had seen some things I had written for the paper before so he asked me to write a short article for them.  From 1997...just about 25 years ago.  Some of you reading this were just toddlers then

Internet 101

It’s on the news every day.  Your co-workers are talking about it.  There are ads in the paper urging you to sign on.  It’s the latest form of communication in our modern world.  It’s called the INTERNET.

What exactly is the Internet?  Basically it is a worldwide network of all the computers that are connected to it.  It’s a mailbox for anyone who cares to use it, and it’s probably the greatest repository of information the world has ever seen.  Do you want to know about motorcycles?  Check out the ‘net’.  Do you want the latest news from your church?  Check out the ‘net’.  Do you want a new recipe for poaching salmon?  Check out the ‘net’.  Do you want to wish your former neighbor who moved to Australia last year a Happy Birthday?  Do it on the ‘net’.

“Well, that’s all nice and dandy” you say, “but how do I do it?”

Like everything else involved with computers it seems pretty intimidating if you haven’t done it before, but the learning curve is short and it’s not that difficult.

You will, of course, need a computer.  And you will also need a modem, ideally a 28.8kbps model.  (Oh-oh, our first technical term).  28.8kpbs simply refers to the speed at which a modem can pass data back and forth...in layman’s terms, how fast can it talk.  Modems can cost anywhere from less than 100 dollars to several times that much.  If all you want to do is use the Internet the lower price ones are certainly adequate.

You also need a ‘service provider’.  A provider supplies the telephone lines that get you into the system.  A party line that connects you to the net.  There are several of them around and their fees average about 20 dollars a month or so.  For this you are given unlimited access to the net.  I should explain here that the term unlimited is qualified.  You may use the net anytime you desire, for as long as you wish, but you will find there will be times when you cannot get onto the net.  If, for instance, a provider has one phone line for every nine customers, only one of those customers can use that line at any particular time.  The rest will have to wait their turn.  This is usually not a problem for people who live in rural or urban areas like Roswell but it can be in metropolitan areas like Denver or Albuquerque.  Take heart though, providers are doing everything they can to give better service and new technology is arriving every day.

So now you have a computer, a modem, and have subscribed to a service provider.  You will need one more item to go along with all that.  A browser.  A what?  A browser, a software program that lets you communicate with everyone else on the net.

A browser puts an interactive program on the screen (Oops...another technical term).  Interactive simply means a computer program that waits for you to do something and then performs an operation like looking for your e-mail.  The two most popular browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Netscape.  The Internet Explorer is free but you must register Netscape for a fee of anywhere from 25 to 50 dollars depending on where you get it.  Most service providers can furnish Netscape for a 30 day free trial, after which you are expected to register it.
Both Browsers work pretty much the same.  They both have mail boxes that let you send and receive e-mail and they both have search engines (another technical term I will explain in a few minutes).

For e-mail you simply click on an envelope icon and your mail will be retrieved from the network mailbox and loaded into your computer.  You can then read it at your leisure.  After reading your mail you can answer it immediately by clicking a button and typing your reply in an edit box.  Then click on the send icon and your response is on it’s way.

You send e-mail the same way.  Click on a button that says something like ‘Create Mail’ and type your message.  Enter the recipient’s address and press the send button.  Both browsers have address books so you can enter the e-mail addresses of those you communicate with regularly and just click on a name to enter the address.

The search engine I mentioned earlier is a program that looks for information.  They have names like Metacrawler - Yahoo - Lycos - Infoseek.

The search engine puts a box on your screen in which you will type one or more key words.  A key-word is a word that describes the subject you want information about.  The more key words you enter, the narrower the search, (Be warned, if you don’t define your subject specifically enough you will be given more information than ever thought existed).

For example, a friend of mine was looking for a Latin version of the Catholic Mass.  I typed the key words ‘Catholic+Mass+Latin’ and came up with about 10 ‘hits’, or sites where the information could be found.  I clicked on one of them, found the entire text of the mass in both Latin and English, and clicked on print.  In a few minutes the printer spit out the entire document.  It was that easy.  You could do the same thing for a treatise on the 100 Years War, the pecan crop in 1947, a list of old 78 rpm record dealers, or just about anything you can think of.  This is called surfing the net.

There you have it, Internet 101.  If you decide to take the plunge and subscribe to a service I would suggest that you contact one of our local internet consultants to install and set-up the software for you.  They charge about 40 dollars an hour, but in that hour they will set it all up, make sure it works, and give you a basic lesson on how to use it.

See you on the net!

Noel

" In a few minutes the printer spit out the entire document. "

 

19 hours ago, Fielder said:

" In a few minutes the printer spit out the entire document. "

 

That would be like on your Okidata dot-matrix printer.  Or you might have a "daisy-wheel" printer.  They were so loud you had to have them in sound-proof enclosures.

 

scott s.

.

 

We are all computer dunces.

Unless you study the tech daily you are going to be a dunce in one aspect or another.

The tech changes with lightning speed. 

On 9/7/2021 at 5:32 PM, scott967 said:

Okidata dot-matrix printer

That brings back memories that I haven't though about in years.

My first printer was a Okidata dot matrix with a 15" carriage to take full sized paper.  I think it was 120 characters per second.  I bought it at a computer show so I got a good price.  $800.  <sigh>  Well, I certainly got $800 worth of use out of it.

I haven't printed anything in years. 😄 

Hook