My love, she comes in a delightful beige box (Internet Surfing)

Member Name: dave27

Product:	Internet Surfing
Date:	10/09/01 (27 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fascinating

Disadvantages: Fascinating

"That PC was the worst thing we've ever bought," spat out Mrs D, with enough bile to burn a hole in the hull of the QEII. "Ever since we got it, you spend all night, every night, up there in your room, clicking away at that bloody thing ... you're bloody obsessed. Well, you've got to decide, it's the PC or us, and I'm waiting, dave27..."

Does that sound in the teensiest, weeniest, tiniest bit ever so familiar ... go on admit it, IT DOES.

A couple of years ago, after eight bloody months of nagging, endless picketing and propaganda, Mrs D finally surrendered to the dave27 wiles and gave in, finally granting permission for the purchase of a PERSONAL COMPUTER, and we've never looked back ever since.

Like a kid with a big toy, a childish obsession, I launched into my new baby with the ultimate in enthusiasm and desire, relishing every single minute alone with that delightful beige box, stroking it serenely and lovingly fingering every switch and connection, fantasising about the endless pleasure awaiting me ... God, it was heavenly...

And the key thing, the most delightful feature, the biggest attraction about any PC these days, as you well know, is the ability to tap into the very life blood and essence of this great modern world of ours, THE INTERNET ... one click and I'm connected, ready to go, with those very attractive web pages, graphics and sound files pouring all over me, like a love potion, caressing my very fibre and drawing me ever on, helplessly into its jealous little universe, never to return.


In short, the Internet, the connection via a modem from a machine in your home to the full wonders of this very exceptionally, marvellously absorbing modern world of ours, is one of the true marvels of the modern age, and once you have embarked upon your assault upon the World Wide Web, you will never look back.

PC's don't come these days without the ab
ility to connect to the net, and all you need to do is plug it into a telephone socket, sign up with an Internet Service Provider and you're away, with only the level of your imagination limiting the possibilities open to you.

I know I couldn't believe how extraordinarily brilliant it all was, when I signed up with BT's talk21 service, although I rapidly switched over to BTInternet, and a year later I switched onto AOL's flat rate £14.99 a month service.

And now, we draw breath on this outpouring of verbose praise and take a bit of an objective pause for a moment or two.

Having said all this multitude of very positive things about the net and its endless opportunities, it's also vital to add that that very feature is very much also its flaw. You see, the Internet is a lawless, chaotic place where anything goes, where you can do anything, where you can publish anything, good, bad or indifferent and there is nothing to say whether it is factually accurate or legal or even acceptable in this day and age. The Internet represents a vast, shapeless mass of information, opinion and multimedia, at the same time wondrously dangerous but also seductively absorbing and impressive - the risks of the chat room and communication by E-mail with God knows who are well known and obvious, but surf onto some places and you can unleash all sorts of spyware and programs blasting ads, spam and pornography arbitrarily all over your system.

However, let's not overstate the problem, because with a combination of a little common sense, some decent virus protection and judicious surfing you can limit the worst of these dangers and give yourself at least some reassurance. And after all, there ain't no pleasure without some risk and walking on that raw edge is very exciting.

Okay fanciful editorial over, let's get a bit more focused...

I am absolutely addicted to the wonders of the Internet and an evening r
arely goes by without a good couple of hours spent tracking things down and keeping myself well amused. Me and Mrs D have reached a pretty uneasy truce these days, which involves me confining most of my activities to very late at night, normally something like 11 until maybe 1 or 2 in the morning, depending on how much I need to do. A lot of that time I am currently spending on the opinion sites, wandering over Ciao, Dooyoo, Mouthshut and Dooyoo, although I have just started racking up hours on ItPaysToLearn. A fair chunk of my time is spent reading E-mail from various accounts and yet further time looking at current affairs (mainly at bbc.co.uk and thetimes.co.uk) and football sites (lufc.co.uk, skysports.com and the Beeb site). I'm also a member of a lot of clubs on the net, and normally spending a bit of my time checking accounts on things like Spedia and Commission Junction. Sporadically, I'll also throw in a couple of hours setting up and modifying web pages on a number of sites I've got set up.

Mrs D spends quite a bit of time on the net during the day, and most of her time is devoted to looking at holidays and things that are relevant to her current project of setting up a holiday home in Brittany. She also uses the Royal Bank of Scotland's direct banking service, though when I loaded up IE6 at the weekend, the banking system stopped functioning because it only works on versions 4, 5 and 5.5, unfortunately. She also happened across a site recently purely by accident devoted to Cairn Terriers, and her obsession with the little brutes led her to quickly dropping that into our Favourites folder.

Such happy accidents regularly happen to us as we roam across cyberspace and check out links on various sites. You can end up miles away from where you originally intended to be and it's always exciting wondering exactly where you are going to end up. It's fascinating stuff, but you have to exert some pretty tight discip
lines upon your activities, or you can find yourself at 3 in the morning wondering where the last four hours had flown to. I know to my cost, because I've been there and I got an ear wagging from Mrs D that particular night, I can tell you. The Internet is a marvellous, totally absorbing invention, but it's easy for it to become not the means to an end, but an end in itself and then you know it's taken you over and you're a slave to the one eyed monster.

Be careful and pleasant surfing...

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