One of the main reasons to get online is to look at the World Wide Web, the largest collection of information ever assembled and an astonishingly useful way to use the internet.

You can read email, keep track of your friends, post photos and videos and even pay your taxes online.

If you want to get from Cambridge to Macclesfield online maps will show you the way, and if you need to go further then you can book a flight more cheaply and easily than you can on the phone.

The program that does all the work is your web browser, and you can't get around the web without one. The browser lets you enter website addresses, often called 'URLs', fetches the page you want and shows it on your screen. If your computer uses Windows then it comes with Microsoft's own browser, Internet Explorer, and that will open automatically the first time you try to look at a web page.

Apple users get a different browser, Safari, and anyone whose computer runs the Linux operating system will usually have Firefox on it.

If you look you can also get other browsers, like Opera, Flock and Konqueror. And Google even has its own offering, Chrome.

Not every browser will run on every computer. The latest versions of Internet Explorer won't run on Apple Macs, and Konqueror will not run on Windows, but whichever computer you've got there will be several to choose from.

Although it might seem a waste of effort to install more than one web browser, more and more people are doing this, especially Windows users who hear about security problems with Internet Explorer and decide to try something different.

Another reason is that some websites look better on certain browsers.

Most people choose Firefox, but many think that Opera is good because it shows sites faster and doesn't slow down your computer as much as the others.

Having two or even three browsers on your computer at the same time doesn't cause problems, and you can even have them all running at once if your computer is powerful enough.

Downloading a new browser is just the same as downloading any new program. You need to use your current browser to search for it, then you copy the installation package to your computer and run it - it will do the rest.

It's nearly Christmas, and many of us will be pleased to receive new gadgets from our nearest and dearest.

Digital cameras, MP3 players, mobile phones and all sorts of other electronic devices are bound to be popular gifts, eagerly unwrapped and pressed into use to photograph granny and put the result on the brand new digital photo frame.

Every one will come with a user manual, a power cable and various other cables, cards and connectors, all different and all expensive to replace. There may be a cable to link your phone to your PC and another one to show photos on your TV as well as USB cables with non-standard connectors.

The temptation is to leave them all in the box, put it to one side and hope you can remember which is which.

But boxes have a habit of getting moved, reused or even thrown away.

So it's worth spending a little time labelling each and every cable and power supply, using a sticky label folded around the cable, and putting the cables, the manual and the guarantee in a labelled freezer bag.

And if you're really keen you can write on the plug with correcting fluid.

That way you can be sure that when you need to find the missing cable or figure out what the red button on your new phone does, you'll know where to look.