The invention discloses a portable device that is similar to a combination
of a palm top computer and a cellular telephone, and which allows the
user to access the Internet and World Wide Web. A host computer that may
also be a Web server, is connected to the Internet and comprises various
software programs to translate, rasterize and compress images received
from the Internet. The compressed images are sent the portable device and
the device is capable of decompressing the compressed image. Thus, the
user views a bit map image of a Web page. The portable device further
comprises methods of pointing and clicking on text and images which
represent links to other pages. All commands that the user enters into
the portable device are sent to the host computer, which performs the
commands via a virtual browser, and sends the information back to the
portable device.