I have had several recent interactions where people have asked me for advice concerning their overall transition from dial-up to high speed.  I know that for a lot of you this might not be relevant, and I hope it isn’t, but I have noticed that while tons of people switch to high speed internet every day, often, the way they think about internet doesn’t…

First of all we’ll start with a telling tautology. The internet is the internet. Google is the same Google no matter what Internet service provider I used to get there. Basically, whichever delivery method you use be it cable, DSL, satellite, mobile broadband, fiberoptics (oh you are lucky), they all deliver the Internet, in its entirety to your computer constantly. This however does you no good, because you need something that takes the “always on” access to the Internet that you buy monthly, and gives you something to see and interface with. This is called the browser. (We here at the TatStore blog have done several fabulous pieces on browsers, Switch to Firefox and Google Chrome: The Surprise Browser, among others.) In short the browser, takes the information of the internet and decodes and presents the in the webpage format we have come to know and love. Now the interesting thing to remember is that the choice of browser is completely independent of the choice of ISP. If you don’t like Microsoft Internet Explorer, (which comes standard on all windows running pc’s), you can change to Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome, or Apple Safari, or Opera… and back again. Or if you’d prefer you can be cool like me and have all of them on your computer and use the one that best suits your needs at that moment.

It was not always this way, however. In the past, your Internet Service Provider (ISP), often provided both your e-mail service and a proprietary browser (and browser experience… “you’ve got mail”). Therefore, if you accessed the internet with AOL, you almost assuredly used your email of username@aol.com, and you browsed with their specific application – sadly inextricably conflating the terms ISP, browser, and mail client in the minds of most users.

Thankfully those days are behind us, with the broadband revolution we have thrown out the tyranny of the one size fits all browsing experience, and we can now customize how we enjoy the internet with themes, plug-ins, extensions, and a wide, wide mix of product choices. Maybe you would like to compile a to do list which you can view and manage from any where in the world, or maybe you would prefer the full-featured usability of a local calendar client like sunbird and lighting which stores information on your computer which will not be accessible to you from other computers. It’s your choice, but that’s the glory of it, it’s your choice.