First Sissy turns on the machine and the monitor. When it gets done loading Windows 98 she has a screen in front of her that has several icons on it. She clicks on the Internet Explorer Icon and waits while the machine signs on. In the Internet Connection Icon in Program Manager on Windows 98, it is possible to set the machine so that it goes right onto the Internet without you having to type in your user name and password. Just click on the Internet Icon and then put in your user name and password and click the box at the bottom that reads Save password, and also connect automatically. This will make it where when you click on the Internet Icon, you can sit back and relax while the machine signs you in.
Once on the Internet, Sissy, makes a mail run to her Internet mail address at: http://www.hotmail.com. After she reads and answers her mail, and then changes her private password again, (you never know when your little brother might guess it and read all your mail) She is ready to go on to down load and install ICQ.
She is not sure of the address so she goes to a search engine and types in the word ICQ. There are several addresses given to her by the search engine and she clicks on the one that seems to be the one she wants. It takes her to the ICQ download page. That address is: http://www.icq.com/download/. From there she follows the instructions on the page and starts the download process.
One thing of interest that a lot of people don’t understand. You can still surf the net and find other pages while you are down loading a program. So Sissy goes to several URLs while she is waiting for the down load to be complete.
Now Sissy starts the program, which will automatically hook her up to the Internet. Once on the Internet Sissy needs to fill out a form and pick her user name and get herself an identity on ICQ. Once again, the program will walk you through this step by step. After she gets her user name and password, Sissy is ready to see about making new friends and getting her friends signed up on her contact list. There is several ways to search ICQ for your friends, by name, by ICQ number or by nickname. Once she finds her friends she can send them a message that asks if she can be on their contact list. To find new friends, she goes to the random chat section and looks through the people that come up on the screen. If she finds someone who looks interesting, she can send them a message and make a new friend.
There are other Messenger type programs available on the Internet also. One of them is called Yahoo Messenger and is a nice program, that allows you to chat with friends. You can even really chat with friend if you have a microphone for your computer. You can literally talk with them in real time.
Well that is that for today. I hope that you had a good week, my Gentle Readers and that your week ahead is nice.
Christine Dunne, November 1999