When did you first get on the internet.

[Raekwon]

I can't remember the name either. I used them because my computer tech at that time worked for the company and sold me access personally. Turns out it was an admin account and he got in alot of crap when when I used their shell account to download tons of warez (I was 14). This was on a computer my older brother bought a nice IBM Aptiva 486 dx4 100 with a nice 14.4 modem and 4 MB ram.

I remember one night staying up late downloading a demo of mortal kombat it was about 2am and I had school in the morning, I would go back and forth from the tv to the computer to check the progress turnign the monitor on and off each time, the last time I accidently pushed the power button in but stopped myself while holding it in realizing what I had done. I sat there for a good 20min holding that button until I gave up and let go.

Nothing worse than someone picking up the phone either when I first got cable modem it was a happy day. The infamous loading porn pictures on dialup, IRC , and Warcraft.

Originally Posted by Jacks

Early 90's, 14.4 modem, netscape 3.01?

Can't remember the name of the ISP but their domain was canuck.com

The only reason I went with them was to have the cool @canuck.com email address but none of my friends or family had an email address and there wasn't much spam back then so I didn't use the email much.

I remember it took something like 12 hours to download the new netscape, it was 14MB or something like that. Nowadays that would take about 10 seconds.

[Hack&Lube]

Does anyone remember the Alberta Freenet? What was that? I remember dialing in on a monochrome terminal but the memories are hazy.

[GreenLantern]

1997, DLC West 14.4 dial up modem.

Got my computer for "school" but also found some pretty sweet games to play on there, including Ultima Online

First exposure to the internet would have been in 95-96 trolling chat rooms..

[Devils'Advocate]

1990. First year of university. Used it for e-mail and IRC. Didn't use any web-like stuff until 1991 (ie gopher). The first time I remember using the web was 1993. Using Lynx I looked up the transcripts to the Homolka trial. Not because I was extremely interested, but rather wanted to participate in the death knell of publication bans.

[kirant]

2001 for a school project...Chinese Zodiac if I'm not mistaken.

[CaptainCrunch]

I'm thinking 1993

Ah yes the old 14.4k modem, when porn was picture based and pictures took forever to download. When music downloads were midi.

When you no longer had to memorize the dial in numbers for BBS systems.

[burn_this_city]

Originally Posted by Hack&Lube

Does anyone remember the Alberta Freenet? What was that? I remember dialing in on a monochrome terminal but the memories are hazy.

That's what I first used. I remember dialing in and the line was usually busy. I was only 7 or 8 and I don't remember what I did once I got on.

[YYC in LAX]

When did I first get on the internet?

Hmm I think it was junior year. I was drunk and she had a webcam.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by ricosuave

61081147@3web.net

That reminds me of the ridiculous CompuServe email accounts they gave out.

I first got on (and off) in 1996 when my sister got a U of C dialup account. Nothing like a wicked picture loading... loading... here comes the good stuff... loading.... connection dropped... sit there in denial hoping for more loadingggg.....

I remember downloading my first MP3 off of an FTP. I had to upload a bunch of crap (I think a few windows executables renamed as mp3s) to get my ratio high enough, and then about 2 hours to download one song. I was so happy to not have to pay the rich kids with the CD burner $20 for mix cds anymore.

Pirating music was always fun when you were hitting the moving target of the popular service at the time: FTP, Napster, Audiogalaxy, Morpheus, LimeWire, Torrents...

[Beerfest]

I think we get it in our house around 98/99.

[Sr. Mints]

We had a computer, but I didn't realize it could be anything resembling fun til about 1995. My parents were convinced we'd break it and that it was for word processing only.

I got my first computer in the summer of 1997 after working the whole summer in a t-shirt printing factory for $6.50 an hour--and that's when I really got online, I'd say. $30/month internet with Sprint Canada, because it was unlimited, and then Shaw Wave about a year or two later.

[MaDMaN_26]

My mom and her husband ran a business that had to have pretty top of the line computers for the time.

I'm assuming we are not talking about BBS stuff as I had some experience with those back when 9400 baud was expensive and fast... the actual internet was, well I thought it was in 1992-93 but I know the page I saw was webcrawler, which launched in 94' so I'm a little confused... I moved out of my moms place after graduating which was 93, So I assumed I would have seen it before moving out so I'm unclear as to why I would have been at their offices after that to see webcrawler in 94...

At any rate somewhere in there. After being told to "search" for something I asked if instead if I could just start at the beginning and go through each page in order... The concept was very foreign at the time and it took a few minutes of discussion to set in.... "What do you mean search for something... in what context?" lol.

[jammies]

Originally Posted by sclitheroe

What version of OS/2? What a great (and simultaneously awful) operating system..

2 and then I upgraded to Warp when it came out. It was miles ahead of Windows at the time, it's too bad they couldn't get the developer support to have many native applications.

[WilsonFourTwo]

About 10 seconds after I learned that dirty pictures were available.

[Sr. Mints]

Are these BBSs you guys are speaking of the same thing as Usenet?

[Esoteric]

1996 - Shaw Internet

I never had dialup!

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by Sr. Mints

Are these BBSs you guys are speaking of the same thing as Usenet?

pretty sure Usenet was a BBS...

ah here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet

[photon]

Usenet and BBSes are two separate things, though you could access Usenet through some BBSes.

Usenet is still around. And I guess there are probably some BBSes around.

[MarchHare]

My parents first signed up for an Internet account in 1995 (dial-up, 14.4 kbps modem); I was one of the first of my friends with Internet access.

Prior to that, back in the 80s, I dialed into BBSes on a 300 baud modem with my Commodore 64.

[MaDMaN_26]

Originally Posted by photon

Usenet and BBSes are two separate things, though you could access Usenet through some BBSes.

Usenet is still around. And I guess there are probably some BBSes around.

ya reading that wikipedia article - just a bit of it - seems like a similiar setup to a torrent network...

One notable difference between a BBS or web forum and Usenet is the absence of a central server and dedicated administrator. Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one another in so-called news feeds.

probably what fathered the idea of bittorrent...

I never used a usenet... but it also seems to be similiar to mIRC which I dabbled with a bit in late 90's mostly...