MatNet allows you to create up to 5 POP3 e-mail accounts free of charge. Any additional accounts will be billed to you at the rate of $1.00 per account per month.

If you are using Outlook Express:

• 1. Click on tools
• 2. Click on accounts
• 3. Click on Add, then click on mail
• 4, In the display name box, enter your name.
  (This will be what appears in the "From" box when you send an e-mail).
• 5. Click next
• 6. In the e-mail address box, enter username@matisp.net
(where username is your assigned username).
• 7. Click next.
• 8. For server names, you will use POP3 account.
In the incoming mail (POP3) box enter: mail.matisp.net and the outgoing mail (SMTP) box enter: mail.matisp.net
• 9. Click next
• 10. In the account information boxes, enter your username without the "@matisp.net" and the password you chose when you signed up.
• 11. Click next
• 12. Click finish
• 13. Click properties on the account you have just created.
• 14. Click connections tab
• 15. Select Always connect to this account using:
• 16. Select MatNet from the drop-down box.
  Note: If you don't see the MATNET account in the pull down menu, you will need to setup your Internet connection. Please refer to the instructions sheet for your version of Windows.
• 17. Click OK.
• 18. Click close.

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Let's Go Surfin'

OK, we are set-up and ready to connect to the Internet. Understanding a few of the following things will make your Internet experience a whole lot more pleasant, and will help you get up to speed and have some fun right away. This short introduction will show you some basics, and take you to some popular places on the Internet.

More than likely, you are using Internet Explorer and Outlook Express as your "browser" and e-mail program. We will refer to them as IE and OE for brevity's sake. IE is the program you use to check your "www." stuff. OE is the program for your e-mail that we have set up in the previous sections. If you are using Netscape Navigator or Netscape Communicator, the principles outlined below still apply, just some of the buttons and commands may be worded differently and in a different location.

If you were to open IE, you would see menu commands across the top, (file, edit, view, etc.). If you are familiar with computer programs, you have probably seen these, so let's go down to the buttons under the menu commands. These buttons allow you to go Back to the previous page, Forward to a page you just backed up from, Stop the current page from loading completely, Refresh the current page (very handy if you are bidding on-line) or to your Home Page. Under these buttons, you will see a long white box titled "Address". --This is where you enter your "www.wheredoIwanttogo.stuff"(not an actual link).

After entering the www, (Try http://www.mescaleronet.com for an active web page) on most pages, you will see "http://" preceding the www, don't worry about entering that, your browser most likely does it automatically. When you click on the blue underlined text, you are clicking on a link. Links are how documents (or Web Pages) on the Internet are connected together. Every link has an Address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator). A URL tells your Browser where on the Internet to look for a particular web page.

At present there are about 4 billion (with a B) pages available. These huge collections of web pages are what we call the World Wide Web. (Hence the www.)

The Home page of your browser (in IE it is depicted by a little house) is the page that comes up when you connect & run the Internet Explorer (or any other browser). You can change it to any page you like by clicking on the tools menu and selecting internet options.. You will see a "home page" box under the "general" tab with http://www.whatever.com/ in it. Delete that address and type in the www address of the page you would like to come up when you launch your browser. Click the Apply button at the bottom, and then click OK. Now click on the house icon that says home.

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Where To Go

Although you can have up to (5) five free e-mail accounts through your MatNet Service, you may wish to obtain free mailboxes at another location. This is a great way to avoid being "spammed" by a lot of junk mail. (Just use your MatNet e-mail for friends, family and associates, and use one of these web based e-mails for signing up on internet sites.) There are many Web based mailboxes available at places such as Hotmail, Yahoo, or Netscape, just to name a few. In order to do this you must sign up with the service, and provide a little background information about yourself. After you sign up, you may begin using the account for e-mail.

Chat is a popular Internet pastime, although we would like to warn you that some people find it addictive. Chat services allow you to join in conversation in "real time" with other people by typing your comments into a web page and submitting them. There are a multitude of chat rooms and services available. Just do a search (see the next topic below) for the subject of interest that you like and see what turns up. Extreme caution is advised, be wary of offering any personal information, such as phone number, address, checking account or credit card number, over the internet. There are many people out there who prey on unsuspecting individuals. Caveat Emptor (let the buyer beware!!)

A Search Engine is a service that allows you to search much of the Internet for a specific subject. http://www.altavista.com is a very popular one along with my personal favorite: http://www.google.com. Some other popular ones include:

http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.msn.com
http://www.Webcrawler.com
http://www.aol.com/netfind/