The No. 1, painless way to minimize the time you are actually connected to the Internet without affecting how you spend time online is to read and compose your email offline (while NOT connected to the Internet.) Experienced users, especially those who travel and may frequently dial long distance to pick up email, have been doing just that for years.

The habit is deeply ingrained for those who first used personal computers for electronic mail in the 1980s. They had to be particularly sensitive to conserving finite online time. Many bulletin board systems for electronic messaging might serve hundreds of users a week with a single phone line. Simply put, any time you spent online, other users got a busy signal. Efficient use of time was a courtesy.

Though our digital infrastructure is far advanced from even a few years ago, and online time is far less expensive and more readily available, the fact remains that online time is not an unlimited resource. If our subscribers use their time more efficiently by doing their email offline, it helps us at SNET hold costs down and manage our network better. This will be the case for as long as the Internet is a shared network.

The concept of doing email offline is simple:

1. Connect to the Internet and download your messages.
2. Disconnect from the Internet.
3. Answer messages, taking as long as you like.
4. Reconnect whenever you're ready or whenever you next want to use the Internet, and send messages.

Step 3 is where you can save a lot of time online. This holds true for those subscribers who make use of Usenet newsgroups as well.

If you are unfamiliar with doing your email offline, there are a couple of settings you'll want to check in your software in order to get started. However, the basics are Steps 1-4 above. If you can manage those on your own, you may want to skip ahead.

To configure your computer to handle email offline, choose your computer type from below:

• Windows
• Macintosh