The Internet.......... What would we do without it?

[TooNice]

^ I thought about that thing on procrastinating - but I am not sure. Procrastinator will probably find -something- to do even if it's watching the cleaning the rooms 3 times and watching the washing machine spins

Frankly, it depends. While I was touring Asia, I had to do without the net for a good deal of the time. And even when I crashed in Internet Cafés during my last few nights in Tokyo (it's cheaper) - I was so tired that I'd take a shower, log onto Trillian then fall asleep (missing all the IMs).

[Howard]

I can also remember the first time I sent an email. A geek friend of mine who 'knew computers' set it up over the phone, and I sent him an email.

Then I asked if it was free.

Oh for those days again. 56k modems... paying by the minute for net access like you are ringing a sex line... using Altervista as your search engine, Windows 95 as your OS...

Maybe even saying A\S\L?

Happy days.

Hehe, spot on.

A friend of mine at school showed me how to set up a Yahoo mail account using the school's very new net connection, my brother then built me a computer with a modem in for christmas, and it all went (downhill) from there

[dangel]

Meh, my first modem was 2400 baud - not fast. I worked on orange-screen mainframes at the time too - slow enough to see the text (there were no graphics) slowly draw down the screen.
I remember getting a 28k modem for my BBS and thinking it was the business. All those hours spent doing ANSI animations for it - the lone sysop's job long before the internet took off.

[Bazzlad]

First memory was waiting for pages to load using a 14.4k modem
Second and most frequent was loading yahoo chats java applet with a 56k modem - waiting 5 minutes then hearing some ***** playing the Real slim shady down his mic.

Announcing that pressing Alt + F4 sped up your modem, and watching the idiots.

John has left yahoo chat
princess101 has left yahoo chat
lolface has left yahoo chat

etc


Good times.

A/S/L?

[Dareos]

Acorn 1000 and 3000 possibly Funkstar? or even an Archimedes...

If we didnt have the internet, we would all be a lot more tanned

I think my first net experience was icq. We had set up daisy chained networks using serial cables before for some light gaming, but nothing was to prepare me for online gaming, starcraft and diablo etc. Oh, and there was some chat thing called Palace or something, where you could have an avatar if you subscribed, but otherwise you only had a smiley, albeit with top hats or something, and it was full of people saying a/s/l. Which to this day is something i have never asked anyone (can u imagine doing that to someone in the street?)

[Lee H]

Half of you would 'actually' have to speak to women in real life as opposed to over various IM messaging systems if there was no internet.

My first real web experience was back in the BBS days where there was no free 0845 access codes and phonebills were higher than the GDP of a third world country. My parents were not particularly bothered as I paid for all my costs myself and they were like "pffft - this web larky"...

Now... the shoes on the other foot with her on MSN all the time and various websites and just last night she was handed a 1/2 decent system passed down - 3500+, 2 Gb ram, 6800GT so I shall try and get my dad into gaming to show him what he is missing

[dangel]

You don't want to speak to women - it just provokes them. Trust me, i'm married.

[Stoo]

Acorn 1000 and 3000 possibly Funkstar? or even an Archimedes...

A3000:

[Dareos]

oh the memories, trying to play Virus with a mouse....


(it had another name on the amiga iirc)

[iranu]

Just seen this at the beeb. Looks like some chap is trying to write the history of the internet.

[Stringent]

Compuserve was the first time I used the Internet, I used to loom outside all the chat rooms cos I was scared to go in! LOL!

We have 20mbit Internet (supposedly) at home. I remember the days of 9600-56K, then when we went to 512k broadband, wow all those big patches seemed small for my games! Its funny how so much is taken fro granted.

[mallett]

Announcing that pressing Alt + F4 sped up your modem, and watching the idiots.

Oh the memories! Sitting in the computer room at school and telling everyone that just to make my computer faster, always worked too

[Funkstar]

A3000:

Thats the ones

[IBM]

A/S/L?

Age? Sex? Location?

...the inevitable reply. 'Old enough. Yes please. Where ever you want it, baby', or some such....only to find out your chat partner was just horrific...

[acrobat]

buy magazines

gaming magazines

Yeah a lot is different today because of it. And what we buy is so much different. The magazine idea is the first thing that came to my mind too when I read this thread. I used to buy all kinds of crap that I would flick through at work, on the bus, etc... even at home. PC games magazines, car magazines, gadgets magazines. And then when I was older I got all those maxim type crap mags, purely for the sexy girls in bikinis and whatnot.

Today though.. no chance. I don't think I've bought a magazine for about 15 years.

[tiggerai]

Half of you would 'actually' have to speak to women in real life as opposed to over various IM messaging systems if there was no internet.

How do you know that the "women" you're talking to are actually female (over IM)?

hehehe I could be a man... (i'm not, but i could be pretending)