If somebody had told me five years ago that I would spend all of my free time in front of my computer screen I would have called him crazy. For me outdoor life has always been much more interesting than staying at home. It took me just one night to realize how important the Internet is for me. That night I spent seven whole hours on-line, just entertaining myself. I now believe that the Internet is quite an effective means of entertainment because I can download pictures, songs and videos, chat and communicate with other people and also play network games.

I was really amazed at how interesting information someone can find on the net. Anyone can easily find real funny stories, jokes, poems or entire magazines for free. One can also download pictures of friends, popular actors or favorite singers. Imagine a personal collection of rare pictures of Ricky Martin hanging on your wall "for your eyes only"! Moreover, anyone further interested can download and store songs and their lyrics, videos and games.

In addition to the entertaining material you can find on the World Wide Web, is an excellent way of making new acquaintances or even friends. People with similar interests can share information with one another through electronic mail and chat rooms. E-mail is enabling radically new forms of worldwide human collaboration. Approximately 225 millions of people can send and receive it and they all represent a network of potential cooperating individuals. Mailing list discussion and on-line conferencing allow us to gather together to work on a multitude of projects that are interesting or helpful to us. Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and ICQ (I seek you) are two of the most important programs that provide chat rooms, instant messaging and mailing lists that can connect groups of users to discuss a topic, share ideas and get to know each other.

However, the most entertaining thing you can do when you are connected is play on-line network games. People from all over the planet can play from "Doom clone" games to flight simulating games simultaneously. There are inexhaustible sources of games available for playing, with plenty of different varieties of each type of game. What, however, could be considered as the most amusing fact of playing network games is that you can play against another "intelligence" instead of the computer.

Was it worth spending seven hours in front of my PC? It definitely was because I met many interesting people and made new friends, downloaded my favorite songs and pictures and played exciting games. Perhaps spending the entire night enjoying myself was a little bit exaggerated but the experience was amazing. I would absolutely urge everyone to use the Internet as a means of entertainment as long as they use it wisely and up to a degree.