Once again Microsoft and/or Netscape in this instance thought they knew what was best for every user, made assumptions and have plagued users with lots of wasted space on their hard drives - space that users would much rather use for data or operating space. The item I'm referencing here is the cache file on your browser. When you visit a site on the Internet, where graphics (pictures), banners, any non-text item is located, your browser makes a temporary copy of each of those items on the premise that you've visited this site once, you may visit it again. This is done so that the next time you visit the site, your computer can load from memory any graphics on the page, thus allowing the page to be viewable more quickly than the first time you visited the page/site for your computer won't have to download all the graphics again. But what, you might ask, if I never ever visit the page again? It doesn't matter, the computer still sits and holds all the graphics from the page. Now the cache on your browser, works a bit like your recycle bin (an item I forgot to mention in lesson 1), in that once it gets full, it will remove items that are the oldest in the stack of files. If however, like your recycle bin it is large - items could sit there a long time, never used again, occupying space you'd rather use elsewhere. In older computers and operating systems with smaller hard drives these caches were very small, only about 5 Megs. With newer systems such as those I'm currently setting up at work - with hard drives 40 Gigs in size, this cache is automatically set at 1.8 Gigs (just for these temporary files, I may never need!). At work I use a standard 15 megs for everyone, even heavy surfers, for most people either site hop, rarely viewing the same sites twice or visit just a few sites all the time. Either way there really is no practical need for a cache much bigger than that for in the case of the former - sites rarely visited twice, the cache would be in constant flux anyway and in the case of the latter even 15 Megs is probably too large, for that's a lot of files. I'll confess I haven't kept up with Netscape as much lately as Internet Explorer has dominated the market. However, as I write this, I'm also reminded that there are yet other browsers that folks use, which this will also apply to such as Opera and Mozilla. I'm only letting you how to change the size of the cache for Netscape/Communicator and Internet Explorer, leaving it to you to find this setting on any other browser you may use. In Netscape - Edit, Preferences, Advanced, Cache - there's memory cache and disk cache here. Mine were set at 1024k (1 Meg) and 7680k (7.6 Megs) respectively. Memory cache is how much of the computer's memory is used to capture pages on a very temporary setting. The disk cache is the one I've been referring to, so I'm lowering mine in this instance to 5000K since I so rarely use Netscape. For Internet Explorer - Tools, Internet Options, in the middle of the box displayed - Temporary Internet Files, Settings, Amount of Disk Space to use - if lower than 15 Megs, probably leave it as it is, if more than 15 Megs - set to 15 Megs or whatever you so desire - remembering that this space is reserved for the browser. Another setting here that will also affect performance, but not as much as the cache is concerned - history. How long do you want your computer to keep a record of your visit to a particular site? The default is about 30 days, some have less, some like myself much more. The limits are 0 days and 999 days. If you never wish to see where you've been, set it to zero otherwise leave it alone or make it larger as you wish. The more sites you visit and the more time you keep them, will increase the amount of space required to keep said history. It's not much but then, like dust bunnies under the bed, a little here and a little there and pretty soon.... ============== For those who are writing me with questions - these are going into a question box which I will address either individually or at large as I work through this series of lessons. Tim