First Internet Experience

It was Compuserve for me, on a borrowed Us Robotics sportster 14,400 modem. (you can buy a laptop today with an internal modem for the price of the old sportster.)

I was running windows 3.1 at the time and I don't even think windows 3.11 for workgroups was available. I had 4meg of ram and paid a couple of hundred quid extra to have a 486 processor as opposed to the 386's in entry level machines. My 120MB harddrive was nicknamed the big hard one. CD Roms were not around and you could still buy 5.25" disc drives off the shelf.

Anyway I got onto Compuserve via a premium rate number from a magazine. I had to enter a series of commands, from the magazine, using dos.

I remember I downloaded a database thing for managing my betamax collection. I swear it used to take half an hour to download 1 full meg of data. It probably cost me around £20 a week to browse some filenames. It was sooo expensive. Oh I also got some dirty pictures, but the only program I had to view the gif files was something called lotus freelance graphics that came with ami pro word processor and lotus 123 spreadsheet.... omg somebody stop me.

I suspect this was all early to middle 1993, but I can't be precise. my 3rd son was born at the end of 93 so it was definitely before that. (it was at this point my money stopped being my money)

Anyway.... don't even consider Owning me over my age or the betamax thing cos I'm already so owned my ownership documents are written on pre-owned parchment.
 
I can remember Tiny online and AOL. Used to get loads of them AOL trial discs and get 100 minutes free every couple months. :D
 
Chrisp7 said:
I remember looking for topless pics of the spice girls in 94! Got some of Geri I remember -took ages on 14.4! :o :o
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I thought it sounded a bit fishy so I Wikipediaed it and they formed in 1994 and released their first single in 1996 so I highly doubt you'd heard of them in 1994 :D
 
G-MAN2004 said:
Tiny Online :/
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Me too, I still have that email account ! (thou not used, last checked it was full of spam).

Thou my real first internet experience was at college in 1996, had hotmail account then even, chatrooms (something crappy), same as now really but it was before I discovered forums.
 
Some time in 94, working for a Uni in London, I had a full tilt T1 connection via Janet in my flat. Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice, and if I had the money I knew internet shopping was going to take off, but didnt know what to sell or how to set it up! grrr
 
sam83uk said:
online porn existed in 1993??
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Yes the online bulletin boards used to be loaded with it, at 14.4k it was generally painful. In 94 there were plenty of sites up and running, including most of the brand name mags were there. What was also interesting was there were stacks of sites very openly dishing out hacked passwords for said sites.
 
Porkpie said:
Some time in 94, working for a Uni in London, I had a full tilt T1 connection via Janet in my flat. Netscape Navigator was the browser of choice, and if I had the money I knew internet shopping was going to take off, but didnt know what to sell or how to set it up! grrr
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I didn't make my first internet order til 1999, and it was from the US. This lot came to $76/ £40 ish back then and it was still £20 savings from highstreet prices. But got stung by import tax (UPS fees too), so broken even to UK prices but I had a copy of Blair Witch a the time before it was released in the cinemas here.

"Order Date: November 9, 1999
Order #: xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxxxxx
Recipient: Raymond Lin
View order
Items:

* 1 of: The Matrix
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
* 1 of: The Blair Witch Project
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
* 1 of: Notting Hill Collector's Edition
Sold by: Amazon.com, LLC
"
 
Porkpie said:
Yes the online bulletin boards used to be loaded with it, at 14.4k it was generally painful. In 94 there were plenty of sites up and running, including most of the brand name mags were there. What was also interesting was there were stacks of sites very openly dishing out hacked passwords for said sites.
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bet u made use of every photo LOL
 
scousey said:
I'm already so owned my ownership documents are written on pre-owned parchment.
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That's my nomination for OcUK Post of the Year right there! :D
However, if it makes you feel any better I remember my uncle typing scatological jokes in some humour chatrooms that had about 3 users in them via his BBC Micro using packet radio way before even the primeval days of which you speak! :p
 
Raymond Lin said:
I didn't make my first internet order til 1999, and it was from the US. This lot came to $76/ £40 ish back then and it was still £20 savings from highstreet prices. But got stung by import tax (UPS fees too), so broken even to UK prices but I had a copy of Blair Witch a the time before it was released in the cinemas here.
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Just a shame that Blair Witch is such a God-awful film!
 
When I was about 11 a friend of my Mum gave us a 1200 baud modem - there wasn't really an Intenet, at least no world wide web I remember. I remember dialing into bullitin board systems and downloading the odd picture!
 
1987, on a VT100 terminal. No web in those days. The earliest thing I remember doing was playing AberMUD, but that wasn't the first thing I did.
 
I can't remember exactly what I did, but I remember it was around 1993/1994, and was after my dad spending an entire weekend trying to set it up (and evetually succeeding, of course).

I don't remember being that impressed (probably due to my age at the time). It wasn't until 1996/7 that I fully appreciated what the internet could provide me (not just porn).
 
Nash said:
I thought it sounded a bit fishy so I Wikipediaed it and they formed in 1994 and released their first single in 1996 so I highly doubt you'd heard of them in 1994 :D
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hmm so it must have been 96 then! But I am sure we had internet before that as we had a 14.4 modem - the geri thing must have been an enduring memory!:eek:
 
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