Double-click the connection’s icon in the Network Connections window (Figure 9-3). The Connect To dialog box appears, as shown at left in that figure. Just press Enter, or click Dial, to go online.

But that’s just the beginning. If you crave variety, here are a few other ways of opening the connection:

GEM IN THE ROUGHFaster Access to Connection Icons

In the following pages, you’ll quite frequently work your way to the Network Connections window and the connection icons inside it. With just a little Start-menu surgery, however, you can directly access this folder, or the connection icons inside it, without burrowing through the Control Panel window first.

To do so, right-click the Start button. From the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Click the Customize button, and then click the Advanced tab.

Finally, scroll down until you see Network Connections. Here you have a couple of useful options. “Display as Connect to menu” adds a submenu—directly to your Start menu—listing the various connections available. If you’re a laptop owner, for example, and you’ve established connection icons for several different cities, this submenu makes it extremely easy to get online using the correct local phone number.

“Link to Network Connections Folder,” meanwhile, adds a command to the right side of the Start menu called Network Connections. It opens the Network Connections window, once again saving you the intermediate step of opening Control Panel first.

When you’re finished, click OK twice. Use the new spare time you’ve just won yourself to take up hang gliding or learn French.

While you’re connected to your ISP, Windows XP puts an icon in the notification area (Figure 9-6), reminding you that you’re online. You can watch the icon light up as data zooms back and forth across the connection. And if you point to it without clicking, you’ll see a yellow tooltip showing your speed and how much data has been transmitted. (If this little taskbar icon isn’t visible, take a moment to turn it back on, as directed in Figure 9-6. You’ll find it to be an important administrative center for going online and offline.)

Figure 9-6. Top: To make the notification area icon appear, right-click the icon for your connection (Figure 9-3). From the shortcut menu, choose Properties. Bottom: At the bottom of the General tab, you’ll see the key feature, “Show icon in notification area when connected.” Turn on this option, and then click OK.

It’s important to understand that when your PC dials, it simply opens up a connection to the Internet. But aside from tying up the phone line, your PC doesn’t actually do anything until you then launch an Internet program, such as an email program or a Web browser. By itself, making your PC dial the Internet is no more useful than dialing a phone number and then not saying anything.

Therefore, using the Internet is generally a two-step procedure: First, open the connection; second, open a program.

Fortunately, Windows offers a method of combining these two steps. You can make the dialing/connecting process begin automatically whenever you launch an Internet program. This way, you’re saved the trouble of fussing with the connection icon every time you want to go online.

Figure 9-7. Left: “Connect automatically” makes your PC dial whenever any of your programs tries to go online. Right: If you can’t seem to get online despite taking this step, open the Internet Options program in the Control Panel. Click the Connections tab. Make sure that “Never dial a connection” isn’t selected; choose one of the other options. (That’s an option for people who like to establish the Internet connection manually before opening an Internet program like a Web browser.)

To turn on this option, just open your Web browser and try to Web surf. When the PC discovers that it’s not, in fact, online, it will display the Dial-up Connection dialog box at left in Figure 9-7. Turn on the “Connect automatically” checkbox, and then click Connect.

From now on, whenever you use a feature that requires an Internet connection, your PC dials automatically. (Examples: specifying a Web address in a window’s Address bar, clicking the Send and Receive button in your email program, clicking a link in the Windows Help system, and so on.)

The trouble with the standard dial-up Internet connection is that, unless you intervene, it will never hang up. It will continue to tie up your phone line until the other family members hunt it down, hours later, furious and brandishing wire cutters.

Therefore, it’s worth taking a moment to configure your system so that it won’t stay online forever.

Disconnecting manually

When you’re finished using the Internet, end the phone call by performing one of the following steps:

• Right-click the little connection icon on your taskbar. Choose Disconnect from the shortcut menu (Figure 9-8, top).

• Double-click the little connection icon on the taskbar. Click the Disconnect button in the Status dialog box that appears (Figure 9-8, bottom), or press Alt+D.

• Right-click the connection icon in your Network Connections window. Choose Disconnect from the shortcut menu.

Figure 9-8. Top: The quickest way to hang up is to use the notification-area icon. Right-click it and choose Disconnect from the shortcut menu that appears. Bottom: You can also double-click the icon to view statistics on your session so far, and to produce a Disconnect button for hanging up.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONLaptop’s Lament: Away from the Cable Modem

When I’m home, I connect my laptop to my cable modem. But when I’m on the road, of course, I have to use my dial-up ISP. Is there any way to automate the switching between these two connection methods?

If there weren’t, do you think your question would have even appeared in this book?

The feature you’re looking for is in the Internet Options program in Control Panel (Section 8.1). Open it, click the Connections tab, and then turn on “Dial whenever a network connection is not present.”

From now on, your laptop will use its dial-up modem only when it realizes that it isn’t connected to your cable modem.