For those of you who might be interested, let me tell you that I have never had to pay for Internet access.

Many years ago I joined the University IBM PC Users Group. The University gave the group 15 MB of space on the mainframe used by the students. (The University has many mainframes.) This space was used to store the group's member list, and also for general information. We made the mailing labels for a large membership list. In 1981 all the people who had an interest in computers were a member of this group.

Now, in the year 2000, if you are over 60 you may take courses at the University of South Florida at no cost. I have paid for some courses because I wanted to receive credit for those courses. The advantages of this system are not readily apparent. You get many, many perks as a student: discounts on computer purchases, and we used to get about half price for the newspapers, for instance. (The Tribune and the Times were real cheap compared to the "regular" price) At USF they have many locations where there is computer stuff set up for you to use. When you run computers of different makes and styles, you gain a lot of "experience". I have taken almost every computer course they offer at USF: C, UNIX, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, and other computer languages; Software Engineering, HTML, Internet, and so on. If you elect to take the course for free, you do not have to take any exams, nor do you get University credit. You do, however, get an account on the University system. You might elect to take a course called Biblical Archaeology, or maybe Astronomy, or Life after Death, or any of many courses if you want a rounded education. Staff members and their spouses also get a free account on the system. I can't list it all.

Now, the web became a worldwide phenomenon, as you already know. At the present time, many, many sites are offering absolutely free access to the internet. Many others will now be offering a free fast connection called xDSL. You may go to the AltaVista site and register for free access. It takes only a few minutes, and there are no embarrassing questions to be answered. You can be on the Internet in a few minutes by this means. What you see is a one-inch advertising bar across your screen. You can move it up or down but you can't take it off your screen. You must click on one of the advertisements occasionally (though you need not buy anything) as that is the way that AltaVista pays for the process. I have been using this for several months, and it is very worthwhile to join. If for any reason your current ISP site is not convenient, you can fall back to this one. I can find nothing but user friendly, always there and steady service. I have not ever called and found the lines busy. I really recommend AltaVista.

Yesterday, I bought some shoes at Kmart, and I noticed they had a free CD ROM for their free access which they offer with Yahoo. I put the software on my computer and filled out the registration. It asked for the yearly income, but I tagged "less than $24,000" because I do not want to put my income down on any of the Internet sites. In a matter of minutes, I was on the Internet, a space of about one inch across the bottom of the screen has advertisements and other information. I set my screen to bring up Yahoo and I use my own custom screen. It has the latest news, and the stock market info that I want and other bits of information so that I can one click go to various sites. There are music videos as you start the call to Bluelight, and this takes a minute or so. Once that you get on, the only drawback is the advertising. I do not find that a problem as I know that they must try to make money some way. If a minute's delay at sign on and a one inch line of advertising bother you, try AltaVista as it is better in that respect.

I use the Netscape browser, and I just signed on to the AltaVista service, which I am now on. I type google.com in the Netscape location box, and when I got there I searched for "free internet access". You see a list of sites: AltaVista, Juno, Netzero, Free Internet Access, FreePC, Freei.net, Lifestyle, Excite, Monday, Tritium, and many other free sites.

Remember, free Internet access is not new; in Europe it has been available for some time. I also went to Free DSL access, and the list of information is too long to be printed here. I have signed up for a free DSL access to start in April. By that time, I expect we will all be looking at the various services offered free.

Juno: it is a long winded process to join Juno. It is not the type of service I would choose because they also have a subscription service, and I expect that they will want you to join that. The advertising space is about the same as the others. I much prefer AltaVista because it is so easy to use, and it is simple. Juno is more unfriendly to the user. I have used it, and it works, but I am not interested in it. One other thing. Newsgroups are not available from some of these sites. You can't have everything!

I have tried to give you a thought about what I do in my spare time. We need YOU to write an article for the newsletter to tell us what YOU do with your computer. Everyone wants to know. u