Home Computer: Friendly Demon at the gateway to a bewitched world: Connecting to Internet
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Your support makes all the difference.Internet is a global computer information network, allowing users of the individual networks linked to it through 'gateways' - connection points - to access the other networks and the information databases and users connected to them, writes Andrew Brown.
There are many different levels of using Internet. At the most basic, it is possible to be connected to Internet simply to send and receive electronic mail. That is how members of Compuserve - one of the networks that make up Internet - can send messages directly to the screens of Independent writers.
It is also possible to gain direct access to distant computer systems. This service is provided by Cix - the Compulink Information Exchange - and some other large 'bulletin board systems'. Cix, which has 7,000 subscribers and is located in south London, offers an Internet gateway, which allows members to run one Internet program at a time on distant computers - an information search, for instance, on a library database.
Cix also has access to Usenet, which is a kind of global bulletin board discussing everything imaginable and quite a lot that boggles any imagination. It is indispensable for computer specialists and a magnificent waste of time for everyone else. Again, you cannot, on Cix, read or collect Usenet news while doing anything else.
Demon Systems, by contrast, offers a full internet connection: while connected to Demon you can chat with people, send mail, collect files, read Usenet news and search for a biblical quotation all at the same time. This is undoubtedly the system for people who know what they are doing. Just as certainly, it can be a purgatory for the inexperienced.