Following on from my old “how long have you been using computers” polls from a long time ago, here’s one I’ve wanted to ask for a while.
How did you first get online?
Not the first time you used a computer but rather first time you were actually connected to something outside your own machine. A BBS counts. AOL counts. The school library counts. Your mate’s dad’s work account that you definitely weren’t supposed to be using counts as well.
If AOL or CompuServe was just how you got on the web, pick dial-up. If it was at school, uni or work, pick that one.
For me it was Optus ADSL on the family 😜 machine. I don’t remember any modem screech so I’m firmly in the broadband kid camp, but the internet still dropped every time someone had to use the home phone because the phone had to be plugged into the same wall socket as the modem router.
Last time round the results skewed heavily towards people who started in the 80s which makes sense on a retro instance, so I’m curious how this one splits. I’m expecting a lot of BBS and CompuServe answers.
Tell me the details in the replies!
#Poll #Polls #RetroComputing #RetroTech #OldTech #VintageComputing #ComputerHistory #InternetHistory #Internet #BBS #DialUp #ADSL #Modem #Nostalgia #Fediverse
@SinclairSpeccy IIRC it was in 2002, a paid dial-up session in a "computer club", a department of a post office that happened to have computers, connected to the internet. The access used to be billed per time units, the smallest one being 10 minutes, for about 1/3 USD. Overall personal computers were considered a luxury in ex-USSR up until 2007, that's when cheap and reliable sources of second-hand hardware established. USB thumb drives and CD-RW drives were also considered a luxury at that time, so I had to resort to floppies, and if a file happened to be a tad bit bigger that 1.44 mb, it could take more than one floppy disk to carry valuable stuff like Winamp Skins, or new wallpapers. Windows 98 used to be a go-to operating system for such clubs because of superior gaming capabilities and lower hardware requirements. At the times when Windows XP-capable machines became a commodity, computer clubs already died out.