I receive a lot of questions about error messages that appear when surfing the Internet. There are too many variables to be explained here, but there is an easy way to fix many of those problems. For Internet Explorer 7, open the browser and go to Tools>Internet Options>Advanced and choose "Restore Advanced Settings." For Internet Explorer 6, go to Tools>Internet Options>Advanced and click "Restore Defaults." The default settings are mostly "medium" in terms privacy and security. Changing them to "high" offers more protection from questionable sites, while "low" means you should be extra cautious in your browsing.

I also receive a lot of questions about browsers in general. Here's a brief overview. When the World Wide Web came into existence special software was needed to access it and to "browse" its sites. The first commercially successful browser was called Mosaic. It was soon followed by Netscape Navigator, which eventually became the world's most used browser. However, when Microsoft began including Internet Explorer with all Windows-based computers, it soon became the most used. More recently, Mozilla Firefox has challenged IE6 with improved security. However, IE7 is said to have matched Firefox's security features. Firefox can be freely downloaded from www.mozilla.com.

Personally, I prefer IE but I also use Firefox in certain instances. For example, I often listen to www.pandora.com using Firefox, while visiting multiple sites with IE. This keeps me from accidentally logging off Pandora while doing extensive page-swapping on IE.

Speaking of Pandora, if you enjoy listening to music while at the computer you'll love this site. Pandora lets users create "radio stations" that play only the kind of music they like. If your musical tastes are broad, no problem — you can create a different station for each genre. You start by naming a station, then you type in the name of a favorite song or artist. If you choose the latter a song by that performer will begin playing. You can then click "I like it" or "I don't like it" or choose from other options, such as "Don't play this song again for 30 days."

Then you will hear more songs by the same artist or different ones with similar styles. I, for instance, have six stations and switch seamlessly from one to another as the mood strikes me. Pandora is totally free and supported by unobtrusive ads that appear as you listen. However, I seldom see the ads because, as mentioned above, I listen via Firefox while doing all my web-hopping with Internet Explorer.

Pandora has a one-time sign-up process, after which you never need to "sign in" again. Just go to the site and one of your songs will begin playing, while your personal "radio station" icons come into view. I signed up when Pandora first began about three years ago, but then stopped listening for a year or so. When I finally returned to the site I was amazed to find all my choices exactly as I had left them.