On Monday, each participant was given a computer, £500 and a credit card and locked in a central London youth hostel to fend for themselves online for 100 hours.

"I think the adrenalin is keeping them going and every morning they are eager to get online," said a spokesman for msn.co.uk, Microsoft's Internet arm that is running the experiment.

Glyn Thomas: Sent flowers to his sister

The volunteers, aged between 30 and 67, were left locked in a room dressed only in a bathrobe. Although food and clothing had been pre-ordered before the official start day, clothes were slow in coming.

Three out of the four volunteers now have a full set of clothes, but one poor soul, 67-year-old Martin Kennedy, has only received a pair of pyjamas, a T-shirt, socks and shorts.

This setback does not seem to have dampened their spirits as other items ordered are gradually delivered.

Robin Katz, a 46-year-old American, has been making use of drawing materials she bought on the Web to create works of art. She plans to display these for Internet users watching her and her fellow castaways on Webcams.

She is also heating up her food on a brand-new microwave ordered online.

Online job search

Emma Gibson, 30, has applied for her first job through the Internet _ at Australia Britannia _ and posted a message to an immigration news group enquiring about Australia's immigration policy should she be offered the job.

She has also spent a great deal of time answering the flood of e-mail messages and advice coming in.

Glyn Thomas, 45, has bought a modem for his PC at home and sent some flowers for his sister. He has also been challenged by a chess player from Germany to a marathon match.

The group volunteered after spotting a newspaper advert placed by organisers msn.co.uk. Their free time online comes to an end on Friday afternoon and results of the experiment, along with favoured Websites visited, will be published next week.

It is expected that by the end of this year there will be more than nine million users of the Internet in the UK, with predictions of retail revenue topping £5bn by 2003.

Microsoft plans to repeat the experiment in a year to see what advances have been made.