I have been signing on some of the local bulletin boards for the past couple of years and it is a good place to meet others who are also interested in computers. It's usually easy to access the names of others who have been online. Most bulletin boards record their names, the date they were online and their modem speeds. Before you decide to go online either with one of the national online services or a local bulletin board, make sure you have a modem. On newer computers, modems are usually internal.
Some people buy external modems to add on to their computer to increase the speed of data.
For the online services like Prodigy and America On Line, a 2400 baud rate is standard although both are experimenting with faster speeds like 14,400 and even higher. An easy way to log onto the local bulletin boards is to get a simple communications program. They are inexpensive and many of them are shareware which means you can copy them from your friends and use them. PcPlus is one such type of communication program that I use. Another is Comit.