If you surf the Net, sooner or later you'll be downloading files and programs. Some of these downloads are pretty straightforward, such as grabbing pictures and text from a Web site. The hot sound downloads these days are called MP3's. You don't need anything special to get these media files; you just download them as they are. You will need software to see or hear those files, though.

Most programs and applications are compressed to make them smaller and thus quicker to download. The problem here is that you'll need to expand them with special software.

One of the most common frustrations with downloads is that you don't know where on your computer the files have been downloaded. And if you do find them, they sometimes have weird filename endings, like .zip, .hqx, .bin, or .sit.

We're going to walk you through some downloading strategies to make your life easier when you download files from the Internet.