I remember when I first learned the art of making instant coffee in the microwave. Since then only one other thing has stimulated my lust for instant gratification more than a Taster's Choice - the Internet! I am reminded of the good old days when software updates came out about once a year, maybe a fix once every six months or so. You would find out about it through some monthly magazine and then, after many frustrating phone calls and possibly a small payment, a disk or two would arrive in the mail. Not any more. Keeping track of the updates for my software is nearly a full time job. I surf the Net for the latest tweaks and refinements, download and install them usually a day or two after they have been released. Buying new software was equally trying. You read the reviews, asked your friends, tried to find a dealer with a copy installed that you could look at. Now there is the downloadable demo. Do you remember when this trend first started? Gasp, cringe . . . three Megs! That will take forever! But hey, that was six months ago. After my first 13 Meg experience I felt like the Net was my oyster, there was no file that I could not conquer. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Saturday morning. There I was, sitting in front of my computer, Netscape churning away trying to find the download site for what was supposed to be the greatest thing in Mac gaming since Marathon 2 came out in about February: Flight Unlimited. A company called Looking Glass Technologies had the idea of taking actual aerial photographs and digitising them over a 3D landscape which would be used as a backdrop for a flight simulator. The game almost fills a CD and runs on a PowerPC only. Looking Glass said that making the program Mac/PPC only was the only way that it could guarantee enough horsepower to make the game playable. I read one article in which the reviewer said that even on his 9500/132, the game bogged down in certain situations. If it bogs down on a 9500, I thought to myself, it must be one hell of a game. I had balked thrice before, as I'm sure had many others before me. I had clicked on that download button and the clock came up with one hour and five minutes remaining. More than I could stomach. I was determined that this time I would not turn back. The download page popped up on my screen as my finger nervously rubbed across the edge of my mouse. I scrolled down to the F section and there it was, in bright red - Flight Unlimited . . . 13.2 megs. I drew a breath and clicked. For the next 63 minutes I cleaned my apartment, washed clothes, watched TV and stopped occasionally in front of my Mac as the bytes slowly racked up. Then it was over. I was sailing over the digitised fields and valleys of Springfield Vermont in my Pitts Special S-2B. It has been about two weeks since I conquered the 13.2 Megs that was Flight Unlimited. I have not looked back since. I downloaded the Mac version of Apache at 13 Megs and change. There are still cyber mountains to climb. Bungie just released a demo for Marathon Infinity - 20 Megs. I have to get out more.