when did you start using the internet?

[LSK]

[Broken_Hero]

1. spring of 96

got addicted to the internet, chat rooms and email...:)

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

53. Me too .

I got addicted to be able to search information on any subject whenever I felt like it.

[Left Is Write]

2. 1995. IRC.

[ceile]

34. me too.

used to spend hours in the computer lab "ircing" (irking). lame.

[anarch]

3. what is this so-called "internet", and how can it make my life better?

:popcorn:

[MrCoffee]

5. It's a fad. Just a bunch of tubes.

[anarch]

ah, yes, ok then. I believe I first used the "internet", as you call it,

in about 1925.

[MrCoffee]

16. Unless that canister has porn in it, you weren't using the real internets

[ScreamingMeemie]

4. My first email address was [e-mail]. Anybody wanting

to send me hate mail at that address should know I've long since given it up and gone on to higher speed pastures. :hi:

[Broken_Hero]

I still got the same email address

from 96...:) :hi:

[LSK]

6. late 1994

Saw a demo of the web at the University of Illinois and shortly afterwards my college had Mosaic on computers in the labs.

[leeroysphitz]

38. Mosaic. Lol.

:)

[progmom]

7. January 1994 for me

Though I was on an email jazz list in 1993.

[southpaw]

8. Mid 90's

Back when the internet was just 8 guys in California arguing about Star Trek and D&D.

[Call Me Wesley]

9. Internet 1995 through CompuServe then, 9200 baud to begin with,

and phone bills up to $400 a month. :(

Bulletin Boards or anything accessible through a PC much earlier, back to the 80's. Remember these:

[MrCoffee]

10. Heh. "Baud" was such a cool word.

[Call Me Wesley]

12. LOL!

:hi:

[LSK]

14. I dialed up to my university modem on a 2400

And used lynx. :)

[MrCoffee]

15. fond memories of the first time i Telnetted somewhere.

[Call Me Wesley]

18. I think the acoustic modems were going at 300,

so yes, I was there. :) Felt like "Sneakers."

I was pretty late for the internet, but I blame Europe for it. At least I never used AOL. My CompuServe email address was something like [e-mail].

[U2can]

25. who would have thought it?

Wesley,,,,, I’m glad you also came up with that one! I started with 300 baud dialup on a dozen or so BB’s in the area back in 1982-3 if my memory serves me right. They quickly fell away when windows 3.1 and the open internet came about. TI-99A started this mess for me back then. ;-) And now with $ thousands + $ of dollars later we are here waiting for the next upgrade. Who would have thought it?

[Call Me Wesley]

26. Indeed!

And welcome to DU! :toast:

[qnr]

46. That looks like my Atari 830 modem :)

[Oeditpus Rex]

11. 1993

Had the same e-mail address the whole time. :silly:

[kwassa]

13. January 94 for me too, probably 91-92 on a huge worldwide intranet

the late great Digital Equipment Corporation had 130,000 employees around the world and a live-time intranet. I spent the first attacks of the Gulf War online talking live with a guy in Australia who was watching the same CNN coverage I was. It made me realize how small the world had really become.

[madinmaryland]

17. January 1995, using Prodigy.

[Magrittes Pipe]

19. 1993.

My first email address, my first purity test, and my first online music order.

[Call Me Wesley]

27. I hope it was a great midi file!

:rofl:

[Magrittes Pipe]

33. It was a mail-order cd.

;)

[Radical Activist]

20. early 90's

'93 maybe? My brother got me started with Veronica, gopher programs when it was rare to see anything that looked like a web site, and I remember Netscape being this new thing developed at the U of I.

[radwriter0555]

21. I first SAW the internet in action in 1981... in a guy's apartment in

Chicago.

Ron Bloom. Strange guy, never figured him out. He was in the music business, very, very wealthy. And strange. Not that Ron Bloom, the other one who was engaged to princess stephanie for about 10 minutes.

He thought I was hot... he was right of course.

So he's got this massive computer in his living room, first one I've ever really seen in someone's house and he has this thing called a modem. He uses his phone to connect the computer to other people to talk to, in text, on the computer. He puts the handset onto a box and you hear the dial up squeal, and next thing you know there is action on his computer screen... lines of text with a caret.

He types in "care to chat".... in orange.. DOS to be exact.

It was wild.

I wasn't able to get online until 1994.

[hunter]

22. 1979. Seems like yesterday.

My first non-student/non-work/non-um-my-friends-gave-it-to-me connection was through delphi in 1992. When I first logged on in 1979 I was a barking personality disorder.

[InkAddict]

29. 1986-7?

Cast aside the C64+ for the "real thing." Had to have 9600Baud modem. Found the Human Genome Project on-line and was hooked forever.

[BrightKnight]

23. mid 90's

I got a copy of Mosaic from NCSA at a Chicago SIGGRAPH conference in the 90's.

I had dial-up shell account before I had a browser.

[NewWaveChick1981]

24. Somewhere around 1993.

Used it for work purposes. Not nearly as many websites available then (obviously). My purpose for using them Internets is now mostly personal... :)

[tjwmason]

28. 1997.

When I arrived at university.

Before then I'd never really touched a computer before then, I still hand-wrote just about everything for school. By the time that the Christmas break arrived, I was on half a million e-mailing lists and could use a fair smattering of H.T.M.L. - ever since then, my attempt to be a luddite has somewhat failed.

[Benfea]

30. Around '89 to '91.

I mostly used it to play MUDs. I even wrote for IITMUD.

[leeroysphitz]

40. No MUDs. No MOOs.

Rules to live by in the UNC computer labs back in the day...

[Benfea]

42. Hee!

Back in the day, MUDs only survived until the sysop discovered them and deleted the whole directory.

IITMUD was installed by the sysop. ;)

He explained his reasoning. Most MUDs got deleted because sysops were under the mistaken impression that they monopolized CPU cycles, but upon investigation he found that they used very little processing power (although they did take up quite a bit of disk space for hard drives of the time).

[Rabrrrrrr]

31. Depends on how you define it - partly in the mid-80s, partly '93

We had a primitive version in college in the 80s, but my first time to truly dial-in and go online with my very own account was '93.

[u4ic]

32. 1995

at university.

I also remember thinking I'd have no use for a PC. :silly:

[Critters2]

35. Spring of 1995

The slug, as I call my ex-husband, got me turned onto it.

[trackfan]

36. July 1995

On Prodigy.

[swag]

37. June of 1992.

Had done dial-up BBSs in the late 80s, and had been on modems and networks before, but didn't get to the Internet until 1992.

[Redstone]

39. As soon as there was one. Remember the 300-baud modem?

I think I have one around here somewhere.

Redstone

[Mutley]

41. Off and on from 1996 to 2001.

Continuously since 2001.

[CatholicEdHead]

43. Fall of 1995, first year of college

[Reverend_Smitty]

44. Around 1995-6

I was about 11 or 12 at the time and a guy my mom was dating at the time had a computer with AOL 3.0! (woo!) and I remember thinking it was the coolest thing ever. I didn't get my own setup until 97...fun fact for you all, I still have the same screen name now AIM handle as I did almost 10 years ago. I don't think I could ever change it

[LSK]

45. wow, no "newbies"?

I should have made the poll for the 90s then..

[New Earth]

47. 2001 for me

unless you count like late 90's (98/99 etc) when i used to use the computer at the library :blush:

[RFKHumphreyObama]

48. Late 1980s-early 1990s technically

My dad's employment had a Telnet link and so we corresponded with relatives and friends online (the VERY selected few who were online at the time). But the time I started actively using it was from about 1995-96 onward

[njdemocrat106]

49. September 1994

I got Prodigy back around May of 1993, and discovered BBSs soon after. Prodigy originally offered just Internet email before offering WWW access, but in September 1994, a local BBS I used to frequent (a multi-line Worldgroup BBS) started offering shell accounts, and naturally, I started paying up for my first "real" Internet account. I still miss simpler days when Lynx was all you needed to surf the Web.

[MissHoneychurch]

50. I started to study in October 1995

so since then.

[texanwitch]

I started late.

I didn't get my first home computer until 2004.

[BrightKnight]

55. edlin, MultiFinder and tech boom web sites

You will never experience edlin, MultiFinder or tech boom web sites.

That is very sad. Tinkering around with all of that old stuff was actually a lot of fun.

[texanwitch]

51. I started late.

I didn't get my first home computer until 2004.

[politicat]

52. Does ARPAnet count?

I am certain it was before 1990, because we had web service through the Navy at the house, and Dad retired in 1991.

I started really using it in 1994 when I was in college.

[Solon]

57. Yeah it does, though I wonder, do BBSes count?

If so, then mid-80s or so, though they weren't the INTERnet, just a NET that you logged in to locally(long-distance if you had money). I was a kid, what can I say. :)

[MsKandice01]

54. Prodigy - 1993

Then moved onto IRC in 1994. It was all over for me then.

[StellaBlue]

56. 1995, IRC

I remember searching for "Dylan Thomas" once in about 1996 and getting four hits.

I just googled it and got "about 1,800,000 hits" !

haha

Anyway, I was among the first about five kids at my school to have the internet, and we all used to email late at night. I was probably the first person in my county to email her friends that she's lost her virginity.

:rofl:

[sendero]

58. 1984..

.... Usenet News.