Let us see what light we can shed in this area.
Modems are merely the devices that allow a computer to communicate, via your telephone line, to other computers. There are two kinds of modems, internal (which are cards that plug into your computer's "motherboard") and external (which are separate boxes that connect to your computer through a cable. Regardless of whether they are internal or external, you plug a wire into them, and the other end of that wire goes to the wall socked for your telephone. Since you had to unplug your telephone to be able to plug in the wire from your computer, you now can plug it into the other connector on the back of your modem (internal or external).
If you use your telephone to call Aunt Mabel who lives clear across the country you will be charged based on the length of the call. By the same token, if you specify a long distance number when you call with your modem, you will be charged for the length of the call, although very few people call BBSs long distance any more, and except for people who live in rural areas, most calls to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are local calls (and more and more rural areas are finding one or two ISPs providing local service in their area).
In the case of Windows 95, the Terminal Program was improved significantly, and is now called HyperTerminal. It is an acceptable program for connecting to local BBSs, but you still may want to use BananaCom, Procomm, or Qmodem. Windows 95, especially if you have the Plus package or the Internet Connection package, has software built into it to get you connected; you just need to configure it to properly connect with your Internet Service Provider using the logon name, password, phone number, and DNS IP numbers provided by your ISP. It also includes a Web Browser called Internet Explorer (IE). Your ISP may provide you with a different program to get connected to them and to browse the World Wide Web, and that browser may be Internet Explorer, or Netscape, or possibly some other browser.
They try to make it very easy for people to use, and they combine the dialer function and the browser function and just give you a single icon to click which does both. This is good, because it gets you online quicker, but it is bad in that it may make you think you are more limited than you really are.
To understand this, you must realize that when you double click that single icon, two things are happening. First you are activating a dialer which know how to get connected to your ISP, and once that dialer gets connected it sets up a pointer in the operating system indicating to other programs that it is prepared to serve as the computer's access to the internet. The name for this is WinSock Connection.
Once the WinSock Connection is established, the second thing happens from your double clicking the icon, and that is the browser your ISP provided you is launched.
You should use the dialer your ISP provided you, but there is no reason you have to use the browser he gave you. If he gave you IE and you prefer Netscape, you can use IE to go to www.netscape.com and download the latest version of Netscape. And if he gave you Netscape, and you prefer IE, you can use the Netscape he gave you to go to www.microsoft.com and download the latest version of Internet Explorer.
And regardless of whether you use IE or Netscape, you can use many other programs AT THE SAME TIME which use your WinSock Connection to get information from the Internet. You can go to www.tucows.com or www.stroud.com and download many different WinSock Client programs, such as E-Mail programs, programs to read UseNet News Groups, Archie clients to search FTP space for files, FTP clients to download files from FTP Sites, IRC Clients for On-Line Chats, programs that will continually capture the latest (within 15 minutes) values of various stocks you own and provide a continually updated scroll of prices for those stocks (while the market is open, of course).
Getting Started with Communication and the Internet just scratches the surface. For more information on communication in general, come to our OnLine Communication meeting from 10am to noon on Super Saturday (either the 2nd or 3rd Saturday of each month -- check your I/O Port for exact schedule), and for more information on the Internet, we have two meetings a month, one from 1pm to 3pm on Super Saturday, and one on the last Monday of each night. Getting Started with Communication and the Internet just met this month on September 8. The next presentation of that program will be at the Owasso Community Center on December 3, and the next normal presentation in Keplinger Hall will be on March 2. Because of the popularity of the program, we are planning an extra presentation in Keplinger Hall on December 1.
| September 20 | Interesting New Web Sites |
| September 29 | Financial Information on the Internet |
| October 11 | Comparing Netscape and Internet Explorer |
| October 27 | Building a Web Page |
As announced elsewhere in this issue, the Getting Started meetings on the first Wednesday have moved to the Owasso Community Center / Senior Citizen's Center, and the meetings on the third Wednesday remain at Keplinger Hall on the T.U. Campus.
| Meetings at Owasso Senior Citizens Center 3pm-5pm and again at 7pm-9pm | |
| Hardware | Wed, Oct 1 |
| Windows | Wed, Nov 5 |
| Communications & Internet | Wed, Dec 3 |
| Word Processing | Wed, Jan 7 |
| Spreadsheets & Databases | Wed, Feb 4 |
| Graphics | Wed, Mar 4 |
| Meetings at Keplinger Hall, Room M8, 7:30 pm | |
| Communications & Internet | Mon, Sept 8 |
| Review | Wed, Sep 17 |
| Word Processing | Wed, Oct 15 |
| Spreadsheets & Databases | Wed, Nov 19 |
| Communications & Internet | Mon, Dec 1 |
| Graphics | Wed, Dec 17 |
| Hardware | Wed, Jan 21 |
| Windows | Wed, Feb 18 |
| Communications & Internet | Mon, Mar 2 |
| Review | Wed, Mar 18 |