When did you first get on the internet?

Richard Dower

1995, the joys of 56k modems and crappy speeds...it was all sooo new and fresh back then. Realplayer was king!....ICQ :eek:

Things have changed very sharpish, a 20GB hard drive cost over 200 old pounds :eek:

TheMilkyPirate

Must have been around 1998 or 99, Used to have to drag the whole pc plus desk out to the hallway so i could plug the internet lead into the phone socket.. It's hilarious when i look back on it now and amazing to see how far we've come seen as i'm now lying in bed on my smartphone on boards :P

tails_naf

Richard Dower wrote: »

56k modems

Flash bas***d, 14.4k for me....for many years.
Stuck with eircom 'broadband' in the countryside now.
Think the 14.4k was a bit faster....

Was in 95 when I first got on too. Remember paying 120 punts for 4mb of ram. Made my computer a rocket though!

LighterGuy

Sega Dreamcast in 2000.

The console was already out since October 1999. But Sega didnt allow the internet service become available until April 2000 for Irish owners.

The web browser wasnt the best. But it was alright at the time. Couldnt download anything tho. But the problem was that the internet was evolving fast around that time. So by 2001-2 the sega dreamcast browser wasnt good enough anymore.

Sticky_Fingers

Think it was '97 or '98, crappy dialup that cost an absolute fortune, had to use it late at night to keep the costs down and even then it was only for a very short time. I remember being completely bewildered by the whole thing and struggling to find my way around.

Also dirty pictures took an age to load and what with the possibility of being discovered at any moment by the parents it was a very trying time for a lad my age;)

stoneill

1993 - Vax based gopher system, all text mostly ascii and no graphics.
Until I managed to get my hands on Netscape!

Senna

1997 or so.
Used to spend hours just typing random stuff into Yahoo. Then Napster arrived and i'd spend a full night downloading 4 songs. I'd just sit there watching the download speed, if it got over 4kps i'd get excited, you couldn't use the internet while downloading a song and thinking back, i mustn't have realised minesweeper or solitaire were there:D

PeakOutput

too soon

WindSock

95 or 96 or something. When Yahoo was the most useful thing for me. God, what a mess it was.

Senna

Our home computer was in the kitchen and the whole family used it. I panicked when i realised the search box in Yahoo remember what i had searched for:o.

Yakult

around 98. Only used it for tabs and then Broadband came and my life left.

JONJO THE MISER

First time i was on it was in 1995, i remember thinking it was just nerds who were into it and i really had no interest in it until 2000 when i read about flutter.com which was the first and best betting exchange and i guess it took off from there.

Pdfile

anyone remember BBS ??

anyone remember the first on ??

i beta tested that with echo...

and thats all i done, still on the net though. :pac:

JohnathanM

Pdfile wrote: »

anyone remember BBS ??

I remember acoustic couplers, very large phone bills and very angry parents.

enda1

Can't remember when exactly, but I do remember I did it without family knowing. Got a IOL disk in the door one day with a free trial number. Then you were supposed to pay for the right to ring them as an ISP?!

I used this number continuously for about 6 months I'd say.

I do remember musicmatch jukebox being one of the first glimpses at mp3s. The early versions had only the ability to rip 3 or 5 songs for free before buying the ****ty software.

I guess it was in the mid-nineties. I remember the computer having an 8gb drive I think and windows 95. Brand spanking new Packard Bell piece of shit.

Garseys

1999, Crappy Eircom Dial up.

Then we got NTL's first Broadband offering!

tallaghtmick

only about 7 years ago,im going on 27 this year so i was a late bloomer,my parents never had use for a pc so we never got 1

deman

1996... 28.8k modem (btw, are you 56k modems were available in 95?)

Used IOL free disc. No email or anything.

AltaVista was my favourite search engine.

Rick Deckard

went into compustore on Stephens Green, got a packard bell with 16mB ram,
<1gb hdd.

was too nervous to go to actual porn sites, so was an avid member of Yahoo Clubs!!

late 97ish..

Funglegunk

96/97.

I had a 33.6k modem, and spent a lot of time on yahoo chat, irc and icq. The following year I ran up the phone bill like **** once I discovered you could play half-life online.

pickarooney

1993 from a SPARC station. alt.rec.humor.bestiality here we come!

jester77

95, the memories... mozilla browser, geocities, fortune city, angelfire, hotmail, altavista, chat rooms and the joys of waiting a few mins for a blurry pic to load to see if it was worth saving to a floppy disk!

Sunnyisland

2007 :eek:

_feedback_

1998. Eircom dial up. Using netscape navigator to visit the oceanfree chat rooms!

galwayrush

Too lazy to google the year, but the headlines were about Princess Diana's death.

bonerm

1996. Clinton was in the White House, Ireland still had a good football team, the end of the world was only 4 years away....

Gyalist

At university in 1987. The www didn't exist then.

jimthemental

2004 I think. Didn't even know how to use email until half way through first year in UL we were so starved of experience with computers in Kilkenny's Vocational Schools

up for anything

2004 so a late starter compared to you but I was using electronic mail back in '89 in work on an IBM5520. Started on dial-up until I got a 400+ phone bill and then ordered Esat BB. It took a full week to install the fecking modem. Nightmare. Once I did though real life took at back seat for nearly a year. I think that's when my kids started going wrong and were doing the equivalent of waiting for daddy outside the local inn back in the 20s!

Back in 99. Expensive slow dialup that I could only use for an hour or so at a time :rolleyes: There began my lifelong addiction to the interwebs :pac:

robinph

Via an acoustic coupler back in '80 something from the parents Amstrad machine, nothing interesting so left it alone. Then started using email to keep in touch with the brother in the US in '92 via the university "Janet" network I think it was called.