For all those who are interested in what Internet Chat is all about, I would like to recommend a couple of sites that will help a great deal, but you do not need to know all about this to use the chat room through PTO. This is provided for those who desire more in depth information and will answer many questions.

http://www.irchelp.org/
http://www.mirc.com/
http://www.newircusers.com/java/index.html

There are many different "clients" or programs that you can use to access IRC or Internet Relay Chat (which the PTO chat room is part of). Probably the most used and one could argue that is the "standard" of IRC Clients is mIRC.

There are "pros and cons" with using the site to access or mIRC (or other client) to access the chat room. As for being able to chat, there is NO difference that I've ever found.

The Internet is a community in itself and PTO is also a community within this larger community. Think of PTO as our "neighborhood". Please try to remember that we are all very real people with real feelings and that just like any form of communication (such as writing, phone, in person, etc) there are appropriate and inappropriate ways of conducting ourselves here in this "online" community. Also, just like in real life, people make mistakes and these are usually honest mistakes.

Our special community of really great and wonderful people uses two very powerful means of communication via the Internet, that is the bulletin board system (forums) and also live IRC (Internet Relay Chat) chat. Both of these means of communication have very similar conduct standards and use very similar expressions, however there are some differences. The most obvious is that with forums, it involves "posting" a message and people are then able to respond to it at their convenience, usually without time constraints. With IRC, it is more like a phone conversation where the interaction is much more immediate.

Welcome to the world of the Internet. This is as real as it gets. :)

IMO

Jim