When Did You First Start Using the Internet?

[electrictroy]

1988. 1200 baud (0.012k) modem. At that speed, you can read the text as it scrolls across the screen!

My email address was heagy@rabbithutch.com. I used it mainly for posting to rec.arts.startrek about "that new star trek show" (next generation) & debating why Picard wasn't as good as Kirk. ;-)



How 'bout you?


troy

[CapAmerica]

I think it was around 1995. AOL 2.0 on Mac OS 7.5.1, email was TheM1@aol.com(long gone now) used it mainly for School and chatting.

[punqsux]

i started in 9th grade..so...1996? aol 3.0, my first e-mail was moggatog@aol.com (yeah, i was pretty into magic at the time ^^)

[YoshiFan1]

I don't think it counts as using the internet but I started using Prodigy around 1992 - 1993. I then switched to AOL around 1994 and started using the internet then.

[red flare graf]

I think it was 1996. I did alot of chatting on Excite.com and looking at pornographic news groups. I didn't use it for near the informative purposes that I do now.

And yeah, it was AOL. I went by Deathlok22

aha

[tyecko]

I think maybe 1998. I had AOL but I don't remember what version or email addy.

[bugg33]

AOL 1.0 on a 486 (maybe it was a 386, i forget) with a blazin' fast 2400 baud modem.

[Apossum]

1994 or 95, though my brother got to test out prodigy in like 1990 or something. I started on AOL on a 14.4 modem.

[moiety]

1993, I was in 5th grade. AOL with a 14k modem, on a 386 with Windows 3.1, and I remember signing on at 2400 bps most of the time, and sometimes 9600 (wow!). I didn't know ANYONE else who had internet. And I remember not even having a buddy list.

[dastly75]

1997, I was in 4th or 5th grade

[Stoneage]

I've said before, but it was 1992, I think. krk0990@exodus.valpo.edu. Nobody I knew knew what the internet was or what email was. I had to download weather maps via ftp for a class.
Explaining these things to my family was like explaining a cheese grater to a cow.

I always like that I had "Exodus" in my first email address. "Toxic Waltz" baby!!!

[MrMaddness]

Prodigy back in 1989 on my lightning quick 2400 bps. We moved to AOL 2.0 when it first came out, and I remember that you had to pay extra to upgrade to 2.5.

[judyjudyjudy]

Probably around 94-95 when I was in junior high. The computer was a 486 (I don't think the 386 ever had a modem), and I remember thinking 14.4k was SO fast. I was also using AOL, though mostly not legally. It was back in the day you could generate CC numbers with "proggies" like AOHell and make a bunch of accounts that would die 3 days later because AOL would finally verify the number.

I think I might have messed with Prodigy a little bit before that, but I can't remember.

[scdoanintendo]

i started in 9th grade..so...1996? aol 3.0, my first e-mail was moggatog@aol.com

Same here, I was in 3rd grade and used AOL.

[Kain Vincent]

Back in 1998, I had AOL.

[b0bx13]

1994. I finally got a computer/internet access at home around 98 or so. Had AOL 5.0 or 6.0. First email was B0BXIII@aol.com.

[Genocidal]

A good 10 or more years ago back before AOL let you surf the intarweb. Had to use GNN to get on the web, until AOL finally bought them out and integrated the web service into their plan at the time.

[scdoanintendo]

My computer was like some Shamrock brand and it didn't have a CD drive in it. I remember buying one and trying to install it when I was like 13 and ended up frying the mother board due to static discharge.

[suffah]

92/93 ish. Used to hit up all the local bbs's. Got to get 5 turns/day on various MUDS.

Still got a SEALED AOL 1.0 diskette. Wonder if it's worth a few bucks. :P

[souljah420]

what the hell is the internet?

[ogreeley]

Must of been around '93 or '94. Had a 486 33, with 4 megs of ram. I think my hard drive was 800megs. 9600 baud modem. This state of the art system ran me about $2,600 and took several years to pay off. First game I bought for it was 7th Guest.

[onikage]

I think it was '96 when I was in 9th grade. My parents wouldn't let me get it any earlier because they had heard that the internet was a "nasty place". I somehow talked them into it over the couse of about a year.

[Parathod]

I think it was '93 when I started. All I remember is AOL taking 5 minutes to start up and constantly disconnecting.

[WinnieThePujols]

1998 or 1999. Somewhere in between there. Running on my 400 MHz Windows 98 desktop, I surfed my way on the internet via the AOL handle "TheBahamutZero." When I frequented message boards, though, I'd use the name "RPGMaster." I later decided to honor my old name while keeping the more recent one, and came up with the name 'RPGMasterZero!"

Most of my time was spent making RPG Making sites. Started with Geocities PageBuilder, "upgraded" to Microsoft FrontPage, then started to code HTML in notepad. Now I'm up to crappy sites in notepad coded in PHP and MySQL.

[AdamInPlaidum]

I started with Prodigy in about 1992. After that was dialup with various local providers.

[DT778]

1999 in 8th grade.

[epobirs]

I got my first modem in 1982 and was active on the BBS scene. This led into intermittant access to what became known as the internet over time as jobs offered it. I got my first ongoing ISP account in 1994. That company was absorbed into Earlthlink and the account kept up until mid-2004, when I killed it to save money and just got by with the addresses provided by my DSL accouint and a $3 a month mail service tied to my personal domain.

[sblymnlcrymnl]

I can't really remember exactly, but it had to be around '94.

[Banshee350]

I think that I had AOL in 95 or so...dont remember my email though...it was probably something gay

[jlarlee]

early 99 on my gateway 433 celeron(ick) I used aol under the name..... wait for it.........jlarlee(so I'm not original sue me) I remeber spending mad time on the BNG ladder of Worms 2 at the time.

[Day1221]

omg, my first time using the net would have been in 95 using aol 2.5 on my old mac. still have the aol disc too. at that time i think also marathan was just getting released for the mac..boy i loved that fps.my first time hearing "internet" would have been like a year earlier when my father was searching for thingsand it just looked like a giant irc server...

[postaboy]

i start off with netzero when it was free. i believe it was back in 1999.

[KrazyKefka]

I started using the internet probably in '94 or '95 with Compuserve. I was into BBS some before that though.

[Mr Unoriginal]

Don't know the year, but I was mighty young. I was into the whole BBS scene with a 2400 baud modem. I would actually meet up with some of the people from those bulletin boards too since everyone was local.

[electrictroy]

I got my first modem in 1982 and was active on the BBS scene. This led into intermittant access to what became known as the internet Cool! Another oldster from the 1980's. BBSing was fun, but I'm happy to leave behind the hour-long game downloads. Zzzz....




I'm surprised no one's said, "You couldn't be on the net in the 1980's! It didn't exist." There's usually one person who says that. Glad to see the CAGgers are more educated.

troy

[Graystone]

About 1994 or 1995. I didn't even know what the hell I was doing back then I would watch my cousin go to porn and wrestling websites and be like oh and ah. In about 2 years I learned everything I know now. I just liked computers and wanted to know everything I could about them. After I saw what they could do not cause of the porn but video games. I read everything about them I could get my hands on. I still can't program I would love to know programming but it seems to hard.

[thorbahn3]

1996. Yahoo looked really different back then.

[Blade]

1999.

I was 12. The site was Karup's Private Collection. I didn't know how to quickly close programs, and we didn't have ad blockers.

I'm still recovering from the massive beating I got from my dad.

...I still have the same computer. :sad:

[Moxio]

1998 I think.

[Mookyjooky]

Back when it was the "Information Super Highway"

[zewone]

Aol 3.0

[cdeener]

It would have been in 1997 with Netscape Communicator.

[ryanbph]

1993 on some slow ass modem....1999 was the first time using a cable modem/broadband setup...

[javeryh]

I started using email in 1992 during my freshman year at college - it wasn't until 1995 or so that I started using the internet (Netscape) like I do now. I remember going to N64.com (now IGN) way back in the day when it was just black and white text though... good stuff.

[Strell]

I STARTED USING TEH INTARWEB WITH FINAL FANTASY 7

OMG teh graphx

FF7 BEST GAEM EVAR!!111

/....

[BustaUppa]

I started in late '97. In the WWF, the Bret Hart Montreal screwjob had just occurred and I wanted to find out everything I could about it. My friend showed me this huge printout of some newsletter he got online that reported all this inside information about the events leading up to Survivor Series. I was stunned; I read through the entire thing and realized that this "internet" was something I had to get in on. Soon I started going to a local library just so I could get online and look at the wrestling websites for more inside news.

I was shattered by that whole Bret Hart thing, I like needed closure or something. Anyway it was shortly afterwards that my family got internet access at home; it was a free AOL trial period in early '98. My email was BustaUppa@aol.com.. After the trial ran out we got some weird free service that our library membership entitled us to. Then it was NetZero, then earthlink I think, then Address.com, and finally Optimum Online Cable modem.


Up until then I had only heard of the Internet in legend. I remember playing Mortal Kombat II in the arcade, and these kids would be trying to figure out how to do fatalities. Then one kid would be like "hold on" and he'd get up and leave. A half hour later he'd show up with this printout that had all the moves on it. Everyone would be mystified and ask where he got that from; he'd just say "the Internet" and we'd all be like "whoooooooooa." That would have been in like '94, so it was a few years before I encountered the 'net personally.

[Quackzilla]

I have been using the internet since I invented it.

[the3rdkey]

1994 I believe was my year I used AOL 3.0 on a packard bell and my email was Eyezzo@aol.com...

I still have the Eyezzo name for ichat and aim ehehheeh over a decade baby!

[epobirs]

Cool! Another oldster from the 1980's. BBSing was fun, but I'm happy to leave behind the hour-long game downloads. Zzzz....




I'm surprised no one's said, "You couldn't be on the net in the 1980's! It didn't exist." There's usually one person who says that. Glad to see the CAGgers are more educated.

troy

I kind of miss downloading games at 300 Baud with a program that displayed the stream in ATASCII (the Atari's 8-bit extended version of ASCII) which was so slow you could easily spot any places in the file where plain text appeared. I accidentally spoiled an adventure game this way once because the text gave away much of the puzzle solutions.

[basketkase543]

Back in 1996 or 97 with AOL 3.0. It was a big deal because AOL finally had a "pay one price for unlimited access" plan (which I personally think was one of the biggest factors in the growth of the internet during that year).

I remember when I first surfed the net I was looking for some Beavis and Butthead videos when I stumbled onto some clips on mtv.com. It said the usual "click here to download", so I did, but I was soooooo pissed to discover that these clips didn't just appear on my comp like changing the channel on a TV. I had no idea about internet speeds or downloading or anything like that, so i was very dissapointed when i discovered just how much freaking time it took to download a five minute clip.

[javeryh]

I was actually in the room when Al Gore invented the internet so I've been using it as long as possible.

[Rodimus]

Prodigy was my first ISP, and I must say it sucked.

[wbc1228]

I think it was 1996. I did alot of chatting on Excite.com and looking at pornographic news groups. I didn't use it for near the informative purposes that I do now.

And yeah, it was AOL. I went by Deathlok22

aha

What?!
You want to tell me that PORN is not informative?!

lol

[dpatel]

For me it was 6th grade so 1996. I don't know what I would do without the internet.

[electrictroy]

What?! You want to tell me that PORN is not informative?! lol Of course it is. Watching girls masturbate, taught me what they enjoy. Maybe if more people watched that sort of thing, they'd be better lovers.

troy

[Quackzilla]

Of course it is. Watching girls masturbate, taught me what they enjoy. Maybe if more people watched that sort of thing, they'd be better lovers.
Have you actually had sex with a real girl yet? :roll:

[Zer0X1999]

1998, with the free dial-up internet supplied that my school provided 14.4k... soo fast.

[lionheart4life]

Probably used it for the first time at friend's houses in late '97-'98. We went to wrestling and video game sites and all that. After I finished grade school in '99, we got a family computer (my mom figured high school would probably require word processing programs and the internet - and good thing we did finally get a computer). We used Compuserve for the Internet, with a 56k modem I believe, or whatever was common at the time. We would get knocked offline every fucking time the phone rang, and the connection would constantly stall, but I still thought it seemed faster and more reliable than when we would use it at my friend's house. It's really hard to believe we've only had the Internet for not even 6 years, its so useful for everything. I remember spending hours and hours on there, and I guess not much has changed. After what seemed like forever, but was probably only 3 years ago, we upgraded to cable internet. I remember really wanting this because I was intrigued about playing my new PS2 online sometime, after they had hyped up the possibilities of online play so much, and Roadrunner had some kind of nice special where we wouldn't really be paying much more than we already did for internet. Eventually I got it online, and it was pretty cool, but honestly I haven't played online nearly as much as I thought I would have.

It's really amazing how far the Internet has come in such a short amount of time. I used to be ok with getting knocked offline all the time, and pages taking minutes to load. Not I get upset if a page or video clip takes more than a couple seconds to load. I can't believe I used to wait over 20 minutes just to watch short video clips.

Here's a link that a lot of people probably already know, but its kind of interesting to see what your favorite websites looked like years ago. CAG is on there too. http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

[SOSTrooper]

1995 w/ AOL 2.5 and 3.0. AOHell and Fate-X made the internet fun for me. I was one of the first in the neighborhood to get Pacbell DSL as soon as it became available in my area in 1999.

[dothog2]

1988. I used it mainly for posting to rec.arts.startrek about "that new star trek show" (next generation) & debating why Picard wasn't as good as Kirk. ;-)


We've chewed some of the same rec.arts dirt. I was one of the people in that newsgroup who was outraged at all the Jean-Luc bashing! Nice one, mate. :)