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It's all T1 and Cable now for me.
Where did you start?
Second exposure was in my teens in the late '80s, after I'd already gotten into the hobbiest computer Bulletin Board Systems (BBS's). I ran a BBS and my boyfriend (now husband) did as well, and worked as an Asst. Manager at a software store in a mall. They had a shared Compuserve account that he and I explored within the limits of his employment.
At some point in between the first two exposures, my family obtained a family AOL account which I was probably the primary user of. I was unimpressed. It wasn't the Internet I'd discovered. It felt artifical. We did the free trial of Prodigy and no one in the family liked it. Never did the MSN thing.
By 1990 I was paying for my own ISP and web hosting account and that's what I've used ever since.
ahhh....the long lines at the lab just to check email.
listserver and majordomo were new and big that year too, a friend of mine got in trouble for sending out a single line email to the entire class of 400+. they got a little smarter after that.
"el gato esta muerto."
Other than WNI, I've NEVER had anything but private ISPs for my PCs. Would never even think of AOL, or any other for that matter.
The first computer I used in high school was actually in another state. We had a timeshare terminal with an acoustic coupler for the phone handset. I'd first type out my Fortran program on paper tape, then slip the tape back into the reader, dial up somewhere about three states away, and run the tape. If the program bombed, I started over from square one.
I remember when I went from a 300 baud modem to a 1200 on my home computer. Of course, it was hard to justify because I didn't type fast enough to really need it. :)
Ah, those were the days! Now--like SEOMike--it's T1s and cable.
I'm not really that old--am I?
Started messing on the "internet" in, hmmm... 92-93, when I was sharing a house with a (now defunct) punk band. We were all nerd-geek-punks, and cobbled together a couple of rank/glitchy PCs and a modem (can't remember the speed, it was a "hazy" period of my life), some pirated software, and a not-well-publicized but not illegal free dial-up portal through the local university. (Or maybe it was illegal... Can't remember fer sure, other than Kinetic Billy saying "no man, it's TOTALLY legit")...
Several years of sketchy dial-ups, usually unpaid for, then ADSL 1999 and never looked back. ADSL, DSL, or similar ever since.
Keep trying to "justify" a T1, but never seem to be able to work the math in it's favor. Maybe next year.
I don't DO AOL, CS, etc. - never have. Doesn't matter if they're cheap, so's the ISP I use now ($8.95 US/month....)
Next thing, hearing about the internet on TV the day it all went live, thought load of cr*p wont last. Recall sneering at someone who boasted they had a homepage and an email address.....
'97 email introduced at work couldnt have one (not senior enough!) and couldnt get my line managers to work either gave up.
'98 bought my first PC - modem added as an optional extra - what the hell. Registered with an ISP in Ipswich charge of £15 per month plus line charges etc.
Connected at 7pm for the first time went to bed that night at 4am so I guess I was hooked. Called in sick for 3 days after so I could just use the net.
I mean how far have we come in only ten years?
It makes the head spin...
Where will we be in another 10 years?
Remember Archie and Veronica? :)
Before email was available widely, we used mesg on the linux command line to send messages via tty number....
My first experience "computing" was with a Timex Sinclair 1000 (American version of ZX81) with 2k of RAM, in 1981. TV as display, text-only, BASIC in ROM, no permanent storage (had to hook up a cassette tape recorder for storage of programs).
I AM that old. I still love those comics, especially the paper dolls. My sister and I collect paper dolls....
I used to think it was the coolest thing. It had a built in cassette drive (it took those mini-cassettes you used to put into dictaphones), and a weird thermal printer [particles.org], that let you make printouts about twice as wide as a cash register receipt.
Pitted against the C-16, which was its main competition of the time, it kicked butt.
Back then we had TTY's with plain paper on a roll and a neat little "paper tape reader" that ran this yellow 1" tape in the side of the TTY to save/load programs. Of course we had a punch card reader and magnetic tapes to load "large amounts" of data. Running the school's daily attendance report took about 1 1/2 hours from punch card to "line printer".
We actually had to boot the computer by toggleing a row of (binary) switches on the front of one of the (3) refrigerator size cabinets in the proper sequences to load all the peripherals, programs and data. Ferite code memory if I remember right, (little magnets in glass bubbles)...
Took a decade off from the computer and got into graphics and printing... Got Aldus Pagemaker v.1 so I could do some desktop publishing, then went online with a 1200bps modem to find fonts and graphics. Discovered BBSs... found the local sysop was also the largest 3rd party distributor of "TBBS" add-on software... wrote some graphics related online programs, forgot about printing and desktop publishing and became a modem junkie.
Ran a BBS from 87-93, went to something called TSX-32 to put up a website, ftp site, irc channel, listserver, and smtp/pop mailer on a single 386 with 32MB ram, (2)20MB HDs before MS released IIS (which couldn't do web, ftp and mail on the same box), pulled a full T1 into my house, setup 14 dial-up lines and was the local ISP... sold the whole mess when internet access and hosting became a commodity and went to work for other people.
My first website is still up, 10 years old this year.
I may actually start using tags beyond HTML v1.0 if this internet thing is really here to stay...<grin>.
