At first glance, its interface looks pretty miserable. Its windows are full of buttons and dohickies and such that, while great for impressing your friends or co- workers, are decidly on the far side of "simple". Luckily for us, we can ignore a good two thirds of them. The only ones we really have to deal with are the "Config..." button, the "Open" button, and the two close buttons. (Note: you may only have one close button. This simply means that you have one of the newer incarnations of MacPPP. In any event, don't worry about it (my Motto of the Day, apparently :)).

This is something I hear about all the time. "Help! My Mac says that there's a problem with PPP! It says PPP is "down!"" This icon simply means that you aren't currently connected to the Internet. It isn't an error message at all...

Both the printer port and the modem port on a Mac can be connected to a modem (don't ask me why). This is simply a way of telling MacPPP which one you're using.

Automatically terminate the connection if you don't do anything Internet-related for X minutes.

When this is on MacPPP checks to make sure nothing has happened to the server every X minutes. Sorta like a neurosis for your Mac.

This closes the connection. This is the same as the "Soft Close" button in other versions (the "Hard Close" is rendered obsolete by the "Disable Auto-Connect" button in FreePPP).

Take a wild guess...

This is used only if you sport more than one Internet connection. It allows you to use multiple configurations, so you can switch between them. If you,like most people, only have one then just ignore this.

Same thing in reverse.

Lets you configure your setup. I'll talk about this in a minute.

This allows you to shut off probably the least polished of MacPPP, auto-connect. Whenever you launch Netscape or Eudora and the software magically connects without you ever having to click the "Open" button, you have auto-connected. Convienient, yes, but also the source one of the most lucrative markets for headache pill manufacturers. Every once and a while MacPPP and Netscape (or Eudora, or another program) will have a disagreement. Netscape requests a connection, MacPPP starts dialing. Netscape gets bored and wanders off to play with its floating point functions or something, leaving an irate and overworked MacPPP holding the bag. MacPPP decides the hell with this, it sure isn't going to be given the runaround by such a jackass of a program and refuses to do any more work. The upshot of this is that you get a dead connection that does less than the senate during a football game. While this may sound bad, it isn't the worst thing that can happen with auto-connect: Sometimes it actually connects of its own accord for no apparent reason. Although it may seem odd, there is an explanation: After constant harrassment by programs such as Eudora (we might as well rotate our villains here) it is naturally quite sensitive about the quality of its work. If a completely innocent application such as Word (a decidedly offline program, even if it does seem large enough to contain a complete set of navigational algorithms for the moon lander) so much as looks in its direction it goes on the defensive and decides to prove, once and for all, that Word's opinion of its service is unjustified. Before you can say "I hate Micro$loth" you have a fast, top-notch and completely unwanted connection to the net. Although this can be a great excuse for indulging in a few hours on IRC, it can also mean trouble if you happen to be away from your Mac and your Captain Kirk screensaver starts acting nosy. This is sometimes referred to by the people who sit in dark, smoke-filled rooms who come up with all the interesting and trendy names for this sort of thing as Phantom Dialing (the surprise-connect bit, not Captain Kirk). Because of the aforementioned reasons I would leave this button checked, although the choice is up to you.

If this is checked you have to connect to the server with the standard terminal (BBS-style) window. Use this only if you have a problem logging in. Leave it unchecked for normal use.

I have no idea what this one is supposed to do and frankly, I don't care. It doesn't seem to make a bit of difference either way. Do what you like with it...

Supposedly makes the modem shriek more softly. Doesn't do much for me..

I suppose that when this is checked the modem waits a second before redialing. As I have only once in the entire time I've been connected through VCS have I encountered a busy signal, this will make no difference whatsoever.