From the Editor: Cruisin' on the Internet

By Betty Hawkins



I don't know about you, but all I hear these days is "Internet," "Internet," "Internet." The other night I saw that NBC Evening News now has an Internet ID--making it easier for all of us to voice our opposing opinions! Internet's e-mail capability has truly brought the world closer. Now its graphical capability is offering a whole new world to those of us in the publishing industry.

There are some of us who, even though we're surrounded by leading-edge technology, are just not going to accept a new concept until someone makes it easy for us. For instance, I wanted nothing to do with personal computers and the software that runs on them until OS/2 came along with Presentation Manager. (You see, the only version of Windows I was familiar with was 1.0, and I didn't see anything user-friendly about that!) Pictures! I want pictures! And menus! Don't make me remember those boring old DOS commands.

Well, that's how I felt about the Internet when I first heard about it. I envisioned a black screen with thousands of lines of white writing on it. And 75-character commands that I would have to remember. No pictures. No menus.

Then OS/2 Warp with the Internet Access Kit (IAK) came along.

Phil Lieberman, owner of Lieberman and Associates and frequent contributor to Personal Systems, was telling me how great the IAK was, so I said, "Show me. Better yet, show Personal Systems' readers!" And that's just what Phil does in this issue. Using his friendly, easy-to-understand writing style that we've come to know and love, Phil takes us through the IAK from the first mouse click to the inner depths of the World-Wide Web. He even makes some of those 75-character commands look friendly. And for you techno-addicts out there, Phil also elaborates on TCP/IP, the communications technology behind the Internet.

Then Van Landrum, Personal Systems' database manager, came to me and said, "Let's get Personal Systems on the Web!" Now, thanks to a lot of creative work by Van, you'll find selected articles from each issue on Internet's World-Wide Web, located at (Watch out! 75-character command coming up!)

http://pscc.dfw.ibm.com/psmag/

Or, just go to the IBM Home Page and click on our name under Publications. We've got articles, back issue indexes, and subscription information. You can also link to other IBM product information right out of our articles. Check it out! It's got pictures and menus!

DOS Revisited
Speaking of pictures and menus--PC DOS 7 brings a whole new look to this tried-and-true operating system. If DOS had looked like this back in the old days, I might not have been so hesitant to get into this personal computer stuff. DOS product planners, Kay Lee and Nestor Miranda, teamed up to tell you all about the new features in PC DOS 7. Its new memory management capabilities alone make it worth a try.

As technology continues to expand our horizons, we find our world growing smaller. More information is available to more people than ever before. The USA Today reports that half of all US households will have a computer by 1997. And the Internet, with millions of users already, is adding new users at a phenomenal rate (in 1994, an average of over a million new users per month). So if you're not already cruisin' on the Information Superhighway, you're in danger of being left behind in a cloud of cyberdust!

Betty Hawkins, Editor