1. Input Devices
2. The Display
3. Software Applications
4. The Operating System
5. The File System
6. Memory
7. The Network Environment
8. The Internet
9. Search Skills
10. Computer Specifications (Hardware Overview)

When people talk about using the internet they really mean two things. The first is that they visit known web sites and follow links presented to them purely, by reading and clicking. The other thing people do is interact with web sites that specialize in directing people to information based on their input. These web sites are called "search engines", and they are among the most important resources on the internet, because they shape the user experience unlike any other.

Among the most dominant search engines are Google and Yahoo. AOL probably deserves mention also, because it is often the first search engine that many users user (since many novice users begin using the internet through AOL as their ISP). But if you really think about it, we often browse sites that present content which allows us to search, or which changes often, which in turn allows us to browse into the rest of the world wide web. These sites in many ways function like content-specific search engines.

A classic example of this is news sites. News sites focus on current events. Search engines focus on things that have historically proven of interest to users based on the searches they have submitted and the links they hav chosen to click on. The larger point is that users don't just rely on search engines to shape and direct their browsing experience. They evaluate each quest for information and services individually, and they often contrast known (non-search) web sites along-side search engines. For information that is up-to-date, known web sites are often the strongest choice.

Having said that, searches are typically "key-word type", meaning that uesrs submit a space-delimited list of works and links are passed back whose content contains most if not all of the words. Some search engines use various kinds of logic, either by having a special syntax supported by the search string, or by presenting to the user a interface for submitting more complicated parameters (like "does not contain"). Researching the search engine is a wise strategy because it can help you overcome challenging search problems (like homonyms where one definition dramatically outweighs another). To see an example of this problem try to craft a search to return information about how spiders choose where to make spider webs. One solution (which seems to work at Google) is: "spider and web and arachnid and spiderweb (not site)".