First time you used the internet?

Fusion · 14 May 2006 at 10:02

Everyone remembers their first time, and sure enough, before I had a PC to call my own, my initial browse was during a Design and Technology lesson at my school when I was in year 8, 1998. Probably when I should have been working. The site in question was 'Playstation Europe', which of course is still running, but looks a million miles away from the dark and dingy corner it was then. I don't recall visiting any other pages, but do remember that I wondered what all the fuss was about. It didn't help that the page hardly contained any media- a few small gifs were all you were likely to find.

It wasn't until 1999 that I purchased a sweet (PIII power!) new rig with a built in 56k modem, that I was left to discover this fantastic new medium. Many hours of browsing of yet more gaming sites ensued and mega phone bills of incresing weight landed on the mat each quarter. Since then, the addiction grew. I'm not the internet every day, the only exception being if I'm on holiday.

I'm a relative n00b to it all, and so I can't wait to hear from those that were using Lynx, or maybe even earlier:

Zip · 14 May 2006 at 10:05

The first time i used the internet was at school when they first got it and it was a dial up conection and there was about 30 other people on a computer each :eek:

Took a whole double lesson to open one page

Burbleflop · 14 May 2006 at 10:09

The first time I used the internet was on a school trip to Cern in Geneva in 1996. I marvelled as a friend went to a search engine (I forget which) and tapped in 'porn'

atpbx · 14 May 2006 at 10:12

First time i went on T'internet was back ay my Mum and Dads place, they had just bought a new PC and when we went over for sunday lunch we had a quick go on it.

That was in say, 1997.

Von Luck · 14 May 2006 at 10:15

First time would have been early 90s, probably 1993 while working for the government. We had a dialup account with Demon. Only used for email and (rarely) for ftp downloads.

At home I'd had a work PC since 1991, but stuck with BBS use until about 96 when one BBS I used got a feed onto the internet and allowed users to share their (single!) email address. That pushed me onto Compuserve (I know!) and then the newly arrived Cable Internet.

Got ISDN in 1998 and then broadband in 2000.

Bizarrely I held LAN parties before I ever got onto the net. 4 PCs with thin ethernet running Doom. Ahh DOS5.0, "waiting for player.....", all back in 1993/94

Fireblade2K4 · 14 May 2006 at 10:16

First time I used the internet was at a mates house back in 1994-95 there was not a lot on there to be honest, and boy was it slow on a 28k modem, lol.

Stu

Mikey1280 · 14 May 2006 at 10:17

I think I first used the net in 1998 when my dad needed it for work, the time when Yahoo was the big search engine.

Phog · 14 May 2006 at 10:18

I can't remember the first time on the internet, but I can recall the sites we (my brother and I) used to frequent. I remember when Newgrounds first started up and typing random searches into Askjeeves.com!

richieboy · 14 May 2006 at 10:19

'twas 1998 for me, and my my what a feeling. I remember BBC.com being some sort of Canadian Computing company's website or something....good times!

i know nothing · 14 May 2006 at 10:20

1992. It took me about 3 weeks to figure out the Hayes commands to write a script in order to get the modem to connect! I started with Dial Pipex, it cost a fortune as the telephone bills were pretty steep! I used it primarily for email to contact people overseas.

Fusion · 14 May 2006 at 10:28

Mikey1280 said:
I think I first used the net in 1998 when my dad needed it for work, the time when Yahoo was the big search engine.

Yeah, I mainly used Altavista at the time. I recall when a mate went against the norm, and used a new engine- 'google'. I thought it was pants, and refused to change my ways (for a few months or so)

MossyUK · 14 May 2006 at 10:45

My bro bought a 28.8k modem back in about 1995 around the same time as CnC was huge. We couldnt really get it to work but i remember finally getting it connected, searching using yahoo to find some way of playing CnC over the net and failing miserably

Greenlizard0 · 14 May 2006 at 11:01

First time was probably back in 1996 (or so I can't really remember) when we got a p60 system with a new state of the art 28.8k modem. I probably got my hotmail account then. Pron probably followed after....I don't really remember lol

basmic · 14 May 2006 at 11:11

Compuserve - and I remember wondering WTF :-)

was.

Alchemy · 14 May 2006 at 11:13

I'm not sure if the first time I used it was back in school or when my brother discovered it.

Inquisitor · 14 May 2006 at 11:17

Late '90s I think, can't remember exactly when. That would have been when i was finishing primary school

That was on AOL 4 on a 56Kbps line

pyro · 14 May 2006 at 11:19

I guess at around 99 at my house, when I finaly got a computer. And internet at school? Hahahaha, we where doing pascal on the blackboard, let alone have internet at school. Internet at school! lol

Alasdair · 14 May 2006 at 11:21

I first went on in 1997 in an internet café in Edinburgh. I remember going along with a couple of friends and not having a clue what to look for. Those were the days when internet cafés were cool and profitable. Before then, I had been restricted to getting any new content on demo and shareware CDs from Mac Format.

It's amazing how much things have changed in these few years, I'm lying in bed at the moment using my PDA!

hp7909 · 14 May 2006 at 11:21

Around 1996, in Kenya on some analogue line that could only do 9.6kbps

chris_r · 14 May 2006 at 11:21

pyro said:
I guess at around 99 at my house, when I finaly got a computer.

Same for me bud

, dial up