Easy, says the student BMJ web guru aka Eric - just watch me!

Whether you're at university, where you get free surf time, or at home grudgingly paying for local dial up, or you need to check your email while abroad in a cyber café, here are 10 tips and tricks to help you around the internet.

Search engines

These are the most useful things on the internet, but if you're not careful they can lead you, quite innocently, down dark paths. Although trodden by accident, these could lead to you getting kicked off your university network. To avoid the deprived - and often Depraved - underbelly of the internet, try using the altavista.co.uk search engine, with its family filter on.

Remember, to search for entire phrases, put quotation marks around your phrase, and to widen or limit your search, try using the Boolean expressions AND, OR and NOT in between your key words.

Bookshops

Internet bookshops can often help you find the book you need easily and quickly, and they deliver it to you within two days, often at great discounts compared with your local shop. Try the BMJ Bookshop (www.bmjbooks.com), BOL (www.bol.com), Barnes & Noble (www.barnesandnoble.com), or the old classic Amazon (www.amazon.co.uk). These often accept payment by debit card, and if you club together they can be quite cheap.

Web based email

Do you use web based email such as Yahoo (www.yahoo.co.uk), MSN (www.msn.com), or one designed for medical students such as MedSIN.com?

To save money, try to write your emails offline using notepad, and save them onto a floppy, then you can cut and paste into your emails, giving your friends an email longer than "Hi, I'm having fun. Gotta go, Me."

Pop3 email

You've had a web based email facility for years, it's your main email address and all your friends know about it. Now all of a sudden, you've got internet access at home and the option of a new email address. But you don't want eric@something.randomcompany.co.uk when you're quite happy with eric@company.com. Well, check out your web based email to see if it offers pop3 access. If it does you can then set up an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Eudora on your home machine to send and receive your web based mail. This can save dramatically on your phone bill, as the client will instantly download your messages from all of your accounts, and allow you to disconnect and reply offline. You then reconnect and send all your mail off in seconds.

Home dial up

You are having trouble with your home dial up. It takes ages to log on, yes? A simple solution to that is to go into "Dial up networking" - use the find tool if you cannot locate this in your accessories folder, right click on your default dial up ("My connection" if you didn't rename it during your initial setup), and on the "Server types" tab, uncheck the "Log on to network" in the advanced options box. This can get you online quicker and solve various problems.

Free internet access

Watch out in the near future for news on free internet access. British Telecom is currently offering free evening and weekend calls to its btinternet service. Recently, Altavista.co.uk and NTL announced 24 hour 0800 dial up access. Altavista plans to be up and running within the next three months and will be charging a small one off fee, then a renewal fee of around £10 each year. NTL plans to have its service off the ground by 17 April and asks only that you spend £10 a month on non-internet calls - this wouldn't be a problem for the author.

Multiple use of browsers

You're reading the latest Net.philes and you really want to check out a site, but you also want to finish reading the rest of the column, simply right click on the link and choose "Open target in new window" in Netscape, or "Open in new window" in Internet Explorer. This can get confusing if you have too many browser windows open, but it can speed up your surfing by allowing you to do several things at once. You could be reading the latest studentBMJ in one window, checking your web based email in another, and sending text messages to your friends in a third - which leads me on to a favourite of mine...

Text messages

You've spent the past six hours looking up references for your dissertation, you're hideously bored, and you fancy a quick pint with some of your mates just before last orders when you've finished. Problem is, you're in the med school library using the computers, and although there's a pay phone just outside, but you're too busy to go just now, and anyway, you remember them saying they were going out. You could ring their mobile, but that costs money. What to do? Well, you could go to somewhere like Genie (www.genie.co.uk) and send them a text message. The service is free once you register, and you can send messages to any UK based mobile phone. Which reminds me, it's coming up to last orders: "Hey, I need a pint, meet me in the union in 10 mins for last orders... Eric (PS: I'll get the drinks in)."

More information about the above, with online tutorials, is available at www.studentbmj.com/links/webexpert.html