Let's play a little. Under accessories have you noticed you have a program called Paint? Have you opened it to see what it is? Have a look; you can have a bit of fun with it and if you like what you make, you can save it. If you are interested, you should try each button; as usual, if you hover over each, it tells you what it is. Also, you really, in this case, should click on Help. Once there, click on Paint in the left pane. It tells you step by step what you can do and how to do it. It will explain it much better than I could because I haven't used in over 2 years. Go ahead, try it and see what happens. Also, have you noticed you have games you can play? Have you played any? This is a matter of choice again. I personally don't spend any time playing games on the internet so some of the games that come with XP are not for me since they are to be played on the internet, but I do play all of the others, Here again, if you are interested, go to the game, click on help, contents; click on the name of the game in the left pane and read how to play. The first time you open the game, it'll ask you for your name. That's ok. It's to keep track of your scores. You have a calculator also under accessories; have you used it? and under accessories/entertainment--- you have what is called sound recorder. That's a cute little thing. You can record a little voice message and send it as an attachement. When you are done recording, you click file, save as/ give it a name, and save. Make sure you browse at the top of the list for save in: so you know where you put it. and then there is Media Player; this is what is used to listen to your music whether it be in your music file or in your cd-drive. That is also what is used to play the little movies you get from friends, or to watch your  own movies if you have a DVD drive. There is much, much more to this Media Player. I have hundreds of mp3's on my computer and on disc also, and I listen to them regularly. I have a DVD drive, so sometimes I watch a movie; however, I have never spent much time investigating radio stations that are available and so forth, first because I'm not a radio listener and second because I never seem to have the time for it. If you have the interest, you can surely spend a bit of time at that.

If you want to keep in close contact with family and friends and would like to talk to them regularly without having to pay, the messengers are the way to go. Yahoo and Msn both have messengers and I like them both. (There are others, of course, but I have never used them.) Actually, I have both because different contacts have different ones. Once you're connected to your contact, you can write to one another, or you can use voice and talk to one another. If you have a webcam you can see one another. You can even talk in groups if that is what you want. I took a course like that once. Every Wednesday afternoon at 2 we would sign in to the group and the lady would teach us. You can even save and print out the conversation if you want. Downloading and installing messengers is pretty straightforward...no biggie. Once you have it, you send an invitation to someone by email and they accept and you're ready to go. Then it's a matter of learning which buttons are for what, as in everything else.Once you have these programs on your computer, you can have them connected all the time or you can close them and open them at will. Even if you have one opened, you can put your status at unavailable and that is that. If you appear online, your contact can click on your name at any time and invite you to a conversation. Now, let me just tell you what I do; I do not have messengers in startup; I have unchecked them from there so they never open automatically. I click on them when I want them opened, so if I appear online to  my contacts it is because I have my messenger opened and I'm willing to talk. Otherwise it is closed, which means I'm too busy that day to chat. Everyone has his or her own way of doing things; that is mine. Ciao for now.