The Chicago Tribune online edition retains many of the charms of the newsprint copy. It concentrates on business and news, but if you look for them you can find leisure and sports articles galore. Best of all, there don't seem to be many of those distracting flashing, blinking advertisements that plague most online resources.

Efficiency and practicality are the keywords here. The Tribune is quick to download, with practical if uninspired graphics. You can't click on most of the pictures, but there are a respectable number of other icons on which you can click. It uses sensible blues and reds, maintaining a businesslike quality. The overall appearance of the site is neat and uncluttered; it's pretty good except it only takes up half of an expanded full-screen page. You end up scrolling a lot because of that.

Other features of the online Chicago Tribune include a compact but good list of past news stories, a comprehensive and friendly help section, and an index. This sit is a good one to visit if you're, like me, having a hard time adjusting to the online world and would really prefer to have the hard copy. It has much the same quality of the real version, with the usual online perks: it's free and convenient.