Recently moved to Spain from Richmond, USA, Bill Goats was the CEO of a world leading software company and has worked with computers since he was a kid. He now works for eNET computers as a field engineer

This week’s Star Letter is from Mr F from Los Altos and he wins an all expenses paid holiday to Siberia.

This week I’ve had a sack load of calls regarding the wonderful world of Instant Messaging. We will look at that and at downloading stuff for free off the Internet.
Most of us assume that email is the way of keeping in touch with folk back home and it’s fine for just that. But what about a good old chin-wag with the grand kids, or even better, pointing ones webcam out the window next time you have a barbecue knowing full well it’s pouring down across most of N.Europe.
Instant Messaging (IM) is an easy and accessible way of passing messages back and forth across the internet instantaneously rather than waiting for the sender and recipient to retrieve their email and reply. In the past few years IM has jumped leaps and bounds and it is now possible to send voice and video across the phone line or setup and join multiple user chat with family and friends.
There are a number of well known and free IM packages about, the most common ones being Microsoft’s MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and ICQ (I seek you) As MSN comes bundled with WindowsXP (and most of us are forced to use Windows) it will be the example throughout this article but please watch out because it may not be possible to chat with users on different IM platforms so find out which IM package your friends and family are using.
The first thing to do is download the latest version of MSN (http://messenger.msn.com/Download/default.aspx) and install it. You could happily use the version that comes with Windows but you may as well use 6.2 and take full advantage of the wonderful new features. Once installed you should be about ready to connect to the MSN community but of course that is too easy. Before you go any further you will need to register your email address with the ‘Microsoft. NET passport service’ which will pop up when you first choose to sign in to MSN. A WORD OF WARNING: Don’t’ use your day-to-day email address when signing up for any Instant Messaging service as you will more than likely be bombarded with Spam emails.  Instead set yourself up a free email account solely for use with MSN.
The next step is to add all your fellow messengers as contacts which is done by selecting the ‘tools’ & ‘add contacts’ menu options and entering their email addresses. Your buddies will get a message that you are wishing to add them to MSN and once done you’re away. Start off slowly and explore the menus and help facility. One of the best bits of MSN is the voice & video facility, which will allow you to chat (with a 5 euro microphone) listen (with a 10 euro pair of speakers) and wave at each other (with a 15 euro webcam) and it’s very easy to setup. When you are reasonably familiar with MSM try   

setting up your own private chat room or hold ‘net meetings’. Any problems give the lads at eNET a call.