How to Use the Internet (4th Edition)

Readers will learn everything from hooking up and connecting to the Internet to participating through e-mail, chat, and newsgroups, to using the basics like telnet and gopher. New expanded coverage of the World Wide Web is included, as well as information on how to set up a Web page.

The latest edition of How to Use the Internet from ZD Press is a heavily illustrated, diagrammatic, and task-centric addition to the vast plethora of basic Internet guides. It covers the usual ground of how to choose and get hooked up to an ISP (Internet Service Provider), how to operate a Web browser, and the joys of search engines, plus it contains a practical approach to electronic mail and Usenet. There are also sections on setting up net filtering packages, encryption, and some new up-and-coming technologies like WebTV.

Some topics are better presented than others. This book may be ideal for those with a very elemental understanding of the Internet and computers in general, since it breaks down each operation or task into step-by-step instructions and screen shots. The problem with this approach concept is that once you get past the explanations of what different buttons do or what the jargon means, very little can actually be broken down into a simple list of procedures. For this reason, coverage of very complicated issues, like Internet culture, is so simplistic as to be misleading at times. Also, some material hasn't been updated since previous editions, like the pages on gopher and telnet. At times this book is understandable and helpful, though newbies may find Sams Teach Yourself the Internet in 10 Minutes and How the Internet Works, Millennium Edition, equally helpful. --Josh Smith, amazon.co.uk