Somewhere in the early to mid 90’s. My first computer was an Apple IIC, but if I remember correctly, the modem to hook up an Apple was a pretty big ticket. A guy I worked with kept talking about BBSing, and sold me a used Compaq 256 setup. First ISP was Compuserve, which had limited access to the web, until AOL bought them out. Discovered chat rooms and BBSing quickly became a thing of the past.
I had a class in college about '85 called "Math and Computers" which was essentially early spreadsheets. The teacher was flabbergasted to learn we had a computer at home identical to the ones used in the school computer lab, while the majority of the kids had never touched a computer before that class.
Y'all have a much better memory than I do.
Phoebert is a computer professional so we've always had computers at home (sometimes much more computing power than I had running the accounting department at work) and the details all run together!. We got DSL as soon as it was available in our neighborhood and I know I was using Rootweb message boards for genealogy soon after that. My best guess is sometime after 1987 when we moved into that house and before 1991 when we got married.
"I was answering more specifically about "the web", not the broader internet. I dabbled in BBS sites for a few years prior, but mostly found them boring, frustrating, and pointless."
Yeah, me too, along with some dabbling in the Well. None of it captured my interest until the web brought internet to a much wider audience.
My (my parents, really) first computer was a Vic-20 in around 1984. With a tape recorder. Connected to a TV.
We later had a C-64c (not exactly the same as a C-64), bought in perhaps 1987. We had a dedicated monitor, disk drive, and dot matrix printer that made pretty good quality printings, which was good because my handwriting was terrible. I used it to write papers right up until my sophomore year of college in 1993, when it was replaced with a 486, later the first computer I ever put "online".
I think mid 90's ish while in school. AOL and all that jazz.
I do not remember emails costing anything though.
I had played around a little at my mom's house in the early 90's.
I got my first computer in late 1993 when I started college. A 386 with a 20 mb hard drive if I recall correctly.
My mom had one if those portables. I remember it had a 5 mb internal hard drive and she swore she would never fill it up...
LOL
I should go back a little....
I was answering more specifically about "the web", not the broader internet. I dabbled in BBS sites for a few years prior, but mostly found them boring, frustrating, and pointless.
<p>I started using BBSes around 1985/1986. I had a Commodore Amiga. The biggest site I used was using MBBS (Major BBS) software. These forums we are using now are based in part on the MBBS forum layout.</p>
<p>I believe my first use of the "World Wide Wed" was on Sun Workstations at UF. I do remember thinking at the time that the WWW was completely useless and only scientists and nerds would ever want to use it. Sigh</p>
We had this discussion a couple of months ago at work.
First time that I can remember was probably in 1993 mm in the military. Someone showed us the "WWW" and used it for SUN Microsystems training.
Played on the net, doing silly searches and finding "your momma" jokes at work until a supervisor shut off the printer.
Then in 1998, I had dial up service at my house, using those AOL discs that gave you free time. So we would hit all the stores that had them for free. And then the free NetZero CDs. The connections were slower than Moses on his death bed. And you got disconnected by incoming calls.
That's when I was introduced to AOL Dating, Blackplanet Dating and a couple of others.
What a blast from the past. I recall the simple text chat rooms, emails cost $.13 each (a bargain since snail mail was $.23), the proliferation of AOL CDs (we had AOL coasters everywhere). One of my employers used Compac "portable" computers. I think the CRT was 5"x5", but with a big stiff cable a 12" CRT monitor could be attached. My first computer was a Comadore 64 with a cassette tape drive. My first desktop had the huge upgrade of 64k RAM, two internal 4.25 floppy drives, an oversized harddrive at 10MB, and the fastest CPU at 10MHz.
Late 1994 was when I was given an email address through my university.
I wasted time chatting on the IRC into early 1995. I remember when someone first asked me if I knew what the World Wide Web was, and I said no.
By spring 1995 I had Netscape and was using that to access the web.
probably in the mid 90's, on AOL. we frequented a bunch of chat rooms and even got together with people on there. fun fact~ we still use AOL mail
I don't want to derail the "hunting/shooting"thread, but GGMM stated there she had been online since the early '90s with USENET, which started me thinking. When did the rest of us "get online"?
In 1988 I was a young, upcoming field engineer and technology was coming on fast. In '88, I was moved to a salaried position, got my first company vehicle, and a "portable" computer. Please note that "portable" simply means it could be folded into a unit and carried. No battery but still weighed 22 pounds IIRC. It was simply not a desktop and so could be taken out on job sites, hence portable with orange letters on a black screen and a DOS operating system. Toshiba I think.
One of our company owner partners was a tech nerd at the time. He was first and I was second of anyone in the company not only having email, but most others had never even heard of email, or a bulletin board to share information. I had learned if from my dad back in the early '80s as he was a techno wizard.
I am personally still not tech savvy, but an avid user for a long time, and far, far from an IT guy or knowledgeable about how this magic actually works.
