San Jose - Friday, July 6, 2001 - By: Kevin McIntyre
	The world of free easy to get music online took a severe blow in the last few months with the demise of Napster. Currently they are offline while they rebuild as a pay site. What the cost will be is unknown but the most often heard price point would be set at $9.95 a month, U.S. Dollars. If they go over that, or worse yet implement a charge per song they may not be successful. There are now several peer to peer packages on the market to fill Napsters place, the most common name is Limewire. Recently Limewire was featured here and while it is good, as with all of the replacements it has its faults. Another is Napigator which uses the Napster interface, however logging onto a server can prove difficult.
	Another option is to return to the original peer to peer program, mIRC. While Internet Relay Chat does have a bit of a learning curve to it, once you get a handle on it you'll find it preforms the job very well with nearly the ease of Napster. I've used it for a few years now and with much success. For a detailed guide on how it works complete with several screen shots visit the URL listed below. A newer version V-5.9 has been released with minor interface changes, however the controls are still the same. To see how to use it I have prepared a page that illustrates making it work on your machine.
	A word of caution, IRC may not be the forum for young surfers to visit, you will get several invites into channels that are most definitely adult only. Also, if you configure the software to auto receive all files do not open anything you did not specifically request. Be sure your anti virus software is up to date.
	(editors note: mIRC is a Windows only application, no Macintosh version is available)
	Kevin McIntyre