|
If you use AOL
America Online comes with its own software, including a dialer, an e-mail program and
a web browser. Be careful when you are setting up the dialer and make sure that
it chooses a local phone number to dial to reach AOL. If you are not paying attention, it
might choose a long distance number to dial, and you wouldn't know until your
next month's phone bill came in.
AOL's web browser is not quite as robust as the regular web browsers
that come on new systems. You can use one of the regular web browsers instead of
the AOL browser, but you'll need to contact America Online support to find out how
to do that.
If you use another Internet Service Provider (ISP)
A PPP dialer
Dialup Networking software comes pre-installed on new Win95/98/NT computers
and Apple Remote Access (ARA) software comes pre-installed on Mac OS7.6 and later computers.
This is the software that allows your PC or Mac to dial the phone and make a
connection to an Internet Service Povider(ISP). Your Internet Service Povider will give you instructions for setting
up this software, or they'll give you an install disk with preconfigured software.
You should have your original system disks or CD
Rom handy in case you ever need to reinstall dialup networking or ARA. A Web browser
Internet Explorer software comes installed on all new
Win95/98 and WinNT machines as well as all new iMacs, G3, and G4 Macs.
PCs that have been upgraded to Win95, might not have it installed.
New Macintosh computers also come installed with Netscape Communicator.
An E-mail program
New versions of Internet Explorer on both Macs and PCs come
bundled with an e-mail program called Outlook Express.
Older versions of Internet Explorer (PCs only) came bundled with Internet Mail.
Some earlier versions of Internet Explorer for PCs did not come bundled with an
e-mail program; in this case you would want to upgrade to a newer version.
Netscape Communicator also comes bundled with its own e-mail program.
Windows users who want to use Netscape can download if for free at
http://home.netscape.com/.
One of the oldest graphical e-mail programs around is called Eudora. It comes
in both a Light (free) and Pro (paid) version for Macs and PCs. If you want to try it, you can
download it from http://www.eudora.com/.
Other software
There are some parts of the Internet that are not accessible from your
web browser or e-mail program, however, these areas of the Internet are
becoming increasingly rare. Chances are high, you won't need extra software.
However, if you decided you wanted
to participate in Internet Relay Chat (IRC), then you would need an
IRC client. Or if you decided to start publishing your own web pages then
you would need a more sophisticated File Transfer Protocol (FTP) client
than the ones built in to most web browsers.
Next
|
