How long have you been using the net?

Oh wow. Yeah, I remember fighting to learn how to use Lynx. I remember buying game magazines for the demo discs because that was easier and faster than downloading demos. (Now, whether they were demos for games I actually wanted to play was another story.)

NCSA Mosaic says hello.

I first got onto the internet in 1996, back when AOL, Prodigy, and Compuserve ruled the ISP universe and broadband didn't really exist. I didn't get a real email address until I went to college, though, in the fall of '96. Now, I wonder how I ever researched anything before the internet. I know that I DID, I just have no idea how...

Libraries. Back before they became the cheap porn-less internet cafes they are now.

I remember using Prodigy for the first time. Now that's a long time!

Since i was 18 so about 10 years ago. Ahh Netscape with its little ships wheel.

Can anyone remeber when windows 3.1 was launched and it was a big thing? I can remember the computer department chucking out all the old BBC micro-computers and replacing them with pcs.

Scary stuff.

I remember looking at nudie pictures on the internet at the college library... in the mid 90's. Cuz back then I couldnt afford a computer.

All my college work was done on a crapturd word processor.

...

I remember thinking the web was just going to wind up being a fad, because no one was doing anything interesting on it.

Now, I'm getting bad advertising code from sites which open 81 blank screens on my PC in 55 secs, forcing me to reboot to clear it...the web progresses, the web takes a few steps back....

First went online back in 1994. I had eWorld, Apple's online community, designed for people who were intimidated by AOL.

I remember when it was cool hearing the modem fire up and get a tone to a local ISP.

I remember when Nestscape was the the best GUI internet browser.

I remember when ICQ first came around and all my buddies scrambled to get a modem and a ISP so we could all chat and send each other new and interesting links.

I remember when you didn't trust e-commerce sites by ordering online and I would call and phone my order in.

That's what I used. Thought it was the greatest back then.

Also, a porn picture took forever to load. Ooooh look! a tit!!!

I got online just after Windows 95 was released. The days of Netscape and 1x cdr burners that were too expensive for me to buy. Life was simpler back then.

Remember those cd burners that had cartridges? Not a bad idea. One I wish would have stayed around.

When I was 14 or so, I was "President" for a while of the MST3k fan club on Prodigy (user ID TWPV73B). The Monty Python fans decided to gang up on us one day and post annoying pornographic ASCII pictures. I suppose it was my first flame war.

I still have one that we use at the radio station I work at. Love it.

I started with USENET in about 1988. I played happily there until those damned AOLers turned up 1993 and ruined everything.

Grrrrr...

I think my first experiences with the internet were back in 96 or so when my step-dad would bring his work laptop home and let me use it. I was all about the html-based chat rooms back then. I honestly dont know how I could spend twelve hour stretches doing that.

1990, when I hit University. Usenet newsgroups on crummy little HP UNIX workstations. Ab.politics was a nasty place. I had a great deal of fun on the local BBS's, too. Lifelong friendships and not a little sex came from that.

I have archives of the late, great Interzone BBS. I still break them out now and then.

Holy shit, there's an internet now?!

Good Lord, where do you get your porn from? A magazine?

Elitist!

Holy shit, there's porn now?!

ON THE INTERNET??!?!!?!


I started using the Prodigy BB in, like 94-95 or something like that. I remember when I didn't even know how to type in a web address and had no idea what URL stood for. My first love was Patrick Sauriol's Coming Attractions. What a fucking cool site that was. Too bad Cinescape swallowed it whole and effectively destroyed it.

interesting thread...

26 now, started really "using" computers when I was around 14.. so '94... a 486-sx 25... 2400baud modem... used prodigy for a bit since it came pre-installed - OJ simpson trial all over the place...

graduated to Delphi ... for email and, gasp, USENET... after my mom read in a newspaper about "alt.sex.*" and said I should stay away from those... thanks for the advice mum! I remember the first zip file I downloaded... 24k and took almost an hour... a pic from the comic book The Maxx... although it took me a little longer to figure out the dos-based PKZip/Unzip to get it extracted...

graduated then to a "real" ISP... web browser and all... their software came with mIRC which would wind up killing A LOT of my time... search engine of choice was Webcrawler, for some reason... I think there were 5 of us on Citynet, fighting for the same 2 lines... busy signal after busy signal...

those were the days... no advertising/popups.. credit card generators that worked (lol!) - i tested this out on prodigy... long after I had quit using prodigy... re-installed and signed up w/ fake info & a generated credit card #... i could login and stay logged in, but would have to sign up again after that for some reason..i only did it a couple of times .. just to see if i could...

and OT but related... coordinating with your buddy to play some MP Doom... "I'll call you, OK? OK!" <can't connect> , call back, busy signal, busy signal, answer, "What happened?" "dunnO", "try again", "k, bye"... repeat... parents picking up the phone and disconnecting u... ah... memories

The day I started paying for my second phone line was a glorious day....

i didn't do the 2nd phone line... i actually lived with my grandparents, so they weren't on the phone often... but when they did pick up, the would never wait for a tone, just start dialing so... you know, i'd be set for the kill or what have you and hear... "CLICK.. zip.. tik tik tik tik.. .zip tik tik tik (rotary phone!)" then.. "Hello? HELLO!?" lol...

i did the local BBS thing too... and Legend Of the Red Dragon...

Ahh firing up my 300 baud modem (when they were brand new - thanks dad!) to visit my buddies BBS and enjoy some nice RPG games. Now you would type in your action, and hopefully within a few days, the rest of the party would type in theirs. It took a long freaking time to fight a battle.

Funny, once I left for college (1992) I kind of stayed away from the internet & computers for a while (thinking it was for geeks and I was a recovering geek, trying to re-establish myself as a partier in college), only to come back and get my first AOL account around 1995 or so. I was brwnsdawg@aol.com (huge Cleveland Browns fan) and thought I was coolest mother on the planet. Then.... I discovered internet porn.. and I have had an active account with an ISP ever since.

I guess I first used the internet in 94. I remember using Infoseek as my search engine, Netscape as my browers. Good times.

Back in 1996.

But do you youngsters remember GEnie?

I remember back when we called it ARPAnet! It was for THE GOVERNMENT, not you whippersnappers with your "blogs" and your free porn. No, back then, we had to imagine porn and we were damn grateful for the opportunity!

When I went to the University we got a 4-hour computer introduction, which included network, Word, Excel and Internet knowledge. I think we used Mosaic, but switched to Netscape a couple of months later. The first excercise was to find a cool picture from Terminator 2 online and print it on the network printer. September -94 this was. Those were the days.

Hah! I remember when the "internet" was "one if by land and two if by sea", and a guy with a fast horse and a map! I bet you little twerps have never even heard of Paul Revere.

I'm only 20 so Im sort of new compared to you pioneering geezards.

I first came onto the scene in 98/99 and I remember my first tastes of the internet.

I once was on at school but didnt know any porn sites so I just went to girlsgonewild.com, this was when that was a fairly new fad too and stared at blurred boobies.

My first personal account came in fall 99 as I entered high school and my ISP was an UNLIMITED usage FREE Net Zero. Those were my favorite days.

When I first started this cyber-addiction MP3s werent too sounded, at least in my area, so I had to do with MIDIs but it was so goddamn hard to find punk rock midis.

The days when Ask Jeeves would take you to some awesome free porn.

And when you could scare chat trolls with "I got your fucking IP Address! I'M GONNA FUCKING FIND YOU AND KILL YOU!"

But like someone else here mentioned, BIG THANKS to Coming Attractions. It was the first movie website I was loyal to and hated seeing it go from it's simple and extremely informative format to......now.



I also recall being in 5th grade, around 1995, and having our librarian tell us that because we had some old IBMs and some Apples our library was no longer a library, it was a "Media Center". I spent many days spelling C-H-A-R-I-O-T to get Charlie Brown to make that damn basket.


The funniest/saddes part of my early internet experience was when I would watch the news, I've watched them everyday since I was a wee lad, and hear them say around 1996 "Visit our website at http://www.kcal9.com" and I thought "So...do I just type that in the word processor then press what?"

This thread reminds me of those "Remember playing this game console?" chats. For some reason I dont like kids nowadays playing Nintendo. I just find it odd if you play it and didn't grow up with it.

I first got on the net in 1998 though my local library. It was the only way to get tabs for TOOL songs.
One day I was printing out the sheet music for the song "Prison Sex", when a lady came from the back all shook up, holding a piece of paper and said "Prison Sex, whats this, what are you doing?" I told her I was printing out sheet music, and pointed to the screen. She seemed embarassed to admit she had been keeping track of all my activities, and caused quite a scene. I finished printing my song and went home.
Thanks Maynard. A year later I purchased my own computer. Now I have stacks of free tabs, and I know the end of every film before I see it. Thanks Al Gore.

Didn't he play Quake?

No, it's "Internets now.

Holy shit, there's a now now?!

Mkay, Helix, sorry but that one's been run into the ground.

When will then be now?

Soon.

The hell with EverQuest and World of Warcraft, I remember playing The Realm and thinking it was the coolest thing ever.

I remember getting AOL in the early, early nineties. Before it even let you access the "world wide wed." I remember version 3.0 or something like that where I had to spend hours downloading the AOL browser update so I could access the World Wide Web. Of course, I was only like 11 so I no idea what to do with it.