Some sites can e-mail you news alerts or updates. You can get a similar service from any Web site if you use Internet Explorer 4.x (which is also integrated into Windows 98). You can instruct the browser regularly to log on to Web sites that you frequent, and either download updates for reading offline or notify you when there's something new on the site. To perform automatic updates, Internet Explorer must be running and connected. Here's how to set up this arrangement.

Go to the Web site and select Favorites-Add to Favorites from the menu. In the Add Favorite dialogue box, either select Yes, but only tell me when this page is updated (in which case Internet Explorer will notify you by adding a red "gleam" to the site's icon or by e-mailing you) or choose Yes, notify me of updates and download the page for offline viewing.

Caption: Tell Internet Explorer 4.x to notify you when a favourite Web site has been updated

Click the Customize button to designate whether you want to download just the current page or the current page and all other pages linked to it and to schedule how frequently Internet Explorer should search the site; then click OK. Click the Create in button to tell IE where to download pages. IE will send you a note via e-mail when your favourite pages are updated. To read them offline, select Favorites-Manage Subscriptions and then click a site's icon to read it.

Alternatively, you can update your subscribed-to sites manually by selecting Favorites- Update All Subscriptions.