Best Internet Access Software

Netscape Corners The Browser Market

WinSock-compatible WorldWide Web (WWW) browsers for Microsoft Windows are as plentiful as ants at a picnic. But, Netscape Communications' Netscape Navigator is a clear winner. Built by the same people who originally developed the mother of all Web browsers, NCSA Mosaic, Netscape is everything NCSA Mosaic is not: fast (optimized for low throughput network links like 14.4-Kbps modems), nearly bug free, easy to use, well documented and fully supported.
Performance is Netscape's most impressive feature, and the speed is enhanced in a number of ways. The product talks to modems and the TCP/IP stack at near optimal speeds. Over a 14.4-Kbps modem, the send and receive lights almost never go out while Netscape is downloading information. It uses RAM and disk cache very well.
This browser also improves the user's sense of its speed by displaying text with hypertext links first. Placemarkers are shown until a graphical element is downloaded. To further enhance speed, Netscape opens up to four connections to a WWW server and round-robin downloads multiple text or graphics elements in a document.
An on-line help system is one of the most innovative and well-executed aspects of Netscape. Opening the standard Help menu on Netscape's menu bar brings up an option to access the product's Handbook. The Handbook is an excellent on-line hypertext, regularly updated manual for Netscape.
Netscape makes it easy to navigate through the Internet. Unlike BookLink's InternetWorks, which features a very good but essentially static card-catalog-or iented navigation device, Netscape offers an opening on-line menu and a series of Windows radio buttons that make it easy to find things.

Netscape Navigator, $39, Netscape Communications Corp., 501 E. Middlefield Rd., Mountain View, CA 94043. (415) 254-1900; fax (415) 528-4124.

Runners-Up
AIR Series 3.0, Internet In A Box 1.0, SPRY, 316 Occidental Ave. South, Seattle, WA 98104.
(800) 777-9638 ext. 26 (AIR Series) or (800) 557-9614 ext. 26 (Internet In A Box); fax (206) 447-9008.

InternetWorks, BookLink Technologies, a subsidiary of America Online, 75 Second Ave., Suite 710, Needham, MA 02194.
(617) 433-0464.