Getting Started Guide

When you are getting started on the internet it can be hard to know which are the best software and hardware products to buy so we have compiled a short list of our favourite software, hardware, books, magazines and services.

Please read the following disclaimer before continuing:

Although there are endless deals on offer, we recommend you go to Dell for best all round quality, value and service for desktop PCs and monitors. (NB. these days, 256 MB RAM for your desktop PC is a minimum.) You can buy Dell PCs online and they have a terrific one year, next day on-site warranty, at no extra charge. If it's going to go wrong it almost always does so in the first year.

It is a good idea to shop around for printers - don't just buy whatever Dell offer to bundle with your PC. One of our favourites is the LBP-660 from Canon (about £200) - an excellent laser printer that doesn't require on-board RAM and is tremendous value for money. Mine has never refused to print a file yet, no matter what the file size. (NB. the LBP-660 doesn't print from DOS.)

Scanners should be cheap but not too cheap. Don't spend less than £70 and buy 'USB' in preference to 'parallel' for improved speed of scanning.

Software

Our advice on software falls into several categories: email software, browser software, FTP software, HTML editors and E-commerce packages.

• Best email software by far is Microsoft Outlook Express which comes bundled (FREE) with Internet Explorer 6.0 & 5.5.
  
  
• Best www browser software is Microsoft Internet Explorer which is FREE and can be most easily obtained by buying magazines such as: Internet, .net and Internet Works and installing it from the on-cover CD-ROM.
  
  
• Best FTP software is WS_FTP which can be downloaded and bought for about $40 from www.ipswitch.com. You will need this, or similar, software if you want to maintain your own site and upload edited pages to your web space.
  
  
• Best HTML editors are by definition the FREE ones, such as Frontpage Express which comes bundled with Microsoft Internet Explorer (versions 4.0, 5.0 and 5.5). If you want a better one, however, we recommend Microsoft Frontpage 2000 or better still (but more expensive) Macromedia Dreamweaver.
  
  
• Best E-commerce software from the point of view of cost and being user-friendly is Actinic Catalog. It costs around £350 and has a database-style interface. If you don't want to DIY, Virtual Internet are now offering a good service, or else we can write you a bespoke shopping cart.

Services

If you want a reliable dial-up connection don't expect the free ones such as Freeserve to deliver all the time. They're good, but a paid-for service still has a few advantages, such as better up-time, better speed and free technical support. I recommend www.clara.net as they do some great deals such as 1p per minute, surf-time (flat fee access) and broadband internet. If you spend a lot of time online during business hours, this makes a great deal of difference to your phone bill. They're also reliable, cheap and have free technical support.

Always, always, always buy a domain name for your commercial web site. If you buy a domain name you are not only securing your business name on the Internet, but you are also enabling your business to swap ISPs (Internet Service Provider) as you inevitably will at some point in the future. And without a domain name you will not be able to take your address with you. Simple as that, trust me on this one, it's just not worth the risk of being without it.

Good companies to register domain names with are www.simplynames.co.uk. Their services are especially good as they offer true domain forwarding, as well as cloaked domain forwarding. (Don't worry about the jargon, I can explain it all to you if you're interested.)

Go to their web site and order it yourself or get us to do it for you. They are cheap, reliable and offer a terrific level of service. Good web space hosting companies are: On The Net (especially for Cold Fusion) and Simply.

Books and Magazines

Last of all, we have a few favourite books and magazines. Favourite magazines are: Internet Works and Business 2.0. A favourite online magazine is www.hotwired.com. A favourite web site for researching all things web site development related is www.perfect.co.uk.

Favourite books are listed below. You can even buy them online from Amazon, click on the links below to go straight to that book!

And finally, once you're on your way to becoming an internet guru...

We also have a sister web site: www.spacehopper.com where we provide useful links for webmasters and web marketeers. As you progress with the design and implementation of your web site, this page of links will become increasingly useful.

Good luck! - Ruth

'Webonomics' by Evan I. Schwartz

'Digital Darwinism' by Evan I Schwartz

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