Joe McAndrew wrote to ask if there is a way of downloading songs from my site in a group, rather than one at a time. Well, not in the strictest sense, but Joe's question brings up some issues worth discussing.

The music pages on PCDon.com contain thousands of popular and classic country songs from the "big band & swing era" of the last century. To play a song, left-click its title's blue link. To save a song to your own computer, right click its title and choose "Save Target As..." (Firefox and Netscape users click "Save Link As...")

The songs normally go into your My Music folder, which is inside your My Documents folder. However, you can choose any folder you prefer. You can even create your own folders with names like, say, "Romantic," "Elvis," or "Patsy Cline."

To create a new folder on your Desktop, right-click a blank spot on the Desktop and choose New>Folder. Type in a name for the folder and press Enter.

Another option is to left-click a song to hear it via your Windows Media Player, and then to click File>Save As to download it.

As for Joe's question, all the songs you play — whether you choose to download them or not — are copied into a folder named "Temporary Internet Files," from whence you can drag them onto your Desktop or into any of your special folders. This means Joe can simply left-click one song after another without going through the prescribed "Save As" protocol on each one. He can then collect them all from the Temporary Internet Files folder.

Older versions of Windows had only one folder named Temporary Internet Files but in Windows XP there are usually multiple folders with this name. However, only one will contain the music files you clicked on. Locate this folder by clicking Start> Search and typing in "Temporary Internet Files." When they appear in the Search Results window, double-click each to find the one containing the target files.

This can be made easier by clicking on View>Arrange Icons By and choosing Type. This will put all files with the same extension (such as WAV or MID) together in easy-to-find groups.

By the way, the songs on my site got there by various means — many were sent by readers, some were copied from other free music sites, and I ripped some from my own CDs. They are in a variety of audio formats, including WAV, MID, ASF, WMA, and MP3. They all work perfectly in Windows Media Player. However, using players such as QuickTime or RealPlayer can produce different results for different audio formats. I recommend using Windows Media Player, since it comes free with all Windows computers and works beautifully.

Other players, such as RealPlayer, often nag you to upgrade to a non-free version and/or to buy music from various services. WMP does have a music-buying link, but never nags you to use it.

Audio formats such as WMA, ASF, and MP3 also work on most portable iPod-like players, but normally not on traditional home stereo systems or car players, unless you have a newer system that plays both computer-generated files and CDA (compact disc audio) tracks.

Files with the MID extension have some peculiarities distinct from the others. Originally, this extension indicated a MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) file, which was usually produced with an electronic keyboard connected to a computer. Thus, MIDI files were always instrumental with no vocals. However, there is a recent phenomenon whereby many MP3 files appear online with an MID extension.

I've discovered that these songs play just fine on Windows Media Player, but have been told they don't work everywhere, including on Macintosh computers. However, if you manually change the MID extension to MP3, the songs play with no problems. The change can be made by right-clicking a song's filename and choosing Rename.

PCDon.com also has a Search Box to help find the songs and performers you want.