How Long Have You Been Using The Internet?

Prodigy, before the end of time!

 

95. Had compuserve back then.

 

i started using it back when i was 5, i remember us taking a class on it in pre-school, which would have been around 91 or 92

 

I can remember using it in elementary school in the mid-90s. Crazy to see how far its come

 

I had access to Arpanet (predecessor to the Internet) in 1977 and Usenet (predecessor to newsgroups/e-mail) in 1982. I recall hearing about the "world-wide-web" around 1992-93 and getting the Mosaic web-browser running around then.

 

Bought my first computer when I was 12 (1993) - a 33MHz Mac of some kind, with a 2400 baud modem. I belonged to a Mac-user ISP called LAMG (Los Angeles Mac Group), since it was something like $50/year for internet access, and that was like all of my birthday and christmas money.

Had AOL after that, in probably 1995-1996, and switched to PCs because no one used Macs. Started using Google around 1997-1998. Got DSL in 1999.

Good times.

 

Worked on an IT project in 1982 - 1983 time frame which used the original IBM PC desktops connected to an Ungerman-Bass ethernet LAN with which we integrated Lanier Word Processing machines. The Laniers could send & receive emailed documents through a subscription service called Telnet (might have been called Telenet).

We used the first version of MS Word to work on the documents on the PCs and then uploaded them to the Lanier for final production. MS Word 1.0 was our big upgrade from WordStar. I think that might have been in early 1984.

The IBM PCs used an 8088 cpu chip, had a single 5 mb hard drive, and a 360k DD floppy disk slot. Yikes.

 

I started using it when i was around 6 years old... playing some online games.

 

Been using it since 1995, I think I was elementary school when I found out about aol and internet explorer

 

I started with an Apple II+ with a 300 baud modem. Remember speed-dialing for hours trying to connect to BBS's run by others on their private PC's (only 1 user at a time!). Or 1 1/4 hours to download one diskette image (IIRC ~125k) Buying a diskette notcher so I could use the 'back' of the 5 1/4" disk. When I upgraded to 1200 baud I wuz smok'n!!

I also had an original IBM PC running at 4.77 mhz, and brought an overclocking kit to bump it to ~7.5 mhz. I wuz SMOK'N!!!! (again!)

Now a cheep watch has more computing power. Geez, I feel old now....... (is this where 'old geezer' came from?)

 

I started using a computer in 1971 ahhh! the wonderful world of COBOL and a Cardreader

 

I was on compuserve at some point early on. Don't recall exactly when, but it was an adventure, that's for sure. I don't think that was technically connected to the internet though. It pre-dates public access to that particular source as it was a BBS, not a WWW.

I started with computers in 1972, writing programs in BASIC and FORTRAN on a PDP 8E, I think. Had a Timex Sinclair as my first computer at home, followed by an original IBM PC with IBM DOS before they sold it to Micro Soft, Also had the requisite Apple IIC, which is in the trunk of my car right now!!!

Oh yeah, those were the days. First modem I used was an acoustic coupler at 30 baud where I fed programs in via paper tape. Later we moved UP to IBM cards.

For all you youngin's who never had the joy of writing a program, I say, LUCKY YOU!!!

Dave

 

i start computer with Mac near 88. A small box all black in white only used letter program...
when i see the difference of material it s funny.

but concerning internet i started in 99 and my first webpage was in 2000.

 

ARPANET in 1979 for me.....compute hardware was DEC-10's, PDP-11/70, etc. The first web browser I remember using was Mosaic in 1993.

 

So do I.

Unfortunately.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6lqza1WNqI

 

I didn't get on the web until 1998, my manager traded me a old computer for my American Comp Lite mountain bike frame & fork. I had AOL back then & I haven't been the same since.

 

ARPANET and ..... USENET/TELENET & PROFS.

Started with the BI-TRAN 6 (IBM, I think) in HS. A box the size of a small refrigerator with rows of lighted push-button switches. Had 1K of doughnut memory. Weighed in at about 200 LBS. Wrote your own program in BINARY, programmed the machine by punching it in using the push-buttons switches on the front and hit the infamous "Run-Start" switch. Then you prayed. Funny though, you actually could do a surprising amount with that machine IF you could use your brain.

Then moved on to BASIC, COBOL and FORTRAN and other lesser known languages with tele-typewriters, paper tape and 30 baud modems w/dial up connections to then new HOT-**** HP timeshared machines.


Dave (DM), I think you are incorrect. Students/kids today that NEVER learn how to write a program are at a BIG disadvantage. They ARE NOT LUCKY (Headacheless-- likely ). Learning programming very clearly helped develop your mathematical, analytical and logic skills. Relationships between letters, numbers and placeholders became crystal clear (or you failed). It was the application of the theory. As a dumba$$ Army Officer I use a surprising amount of what I learned in this area on a daily or weekly basis.

Today, the kids don't know **** about what goes on in that box. They just know they turn it on and it works or doesn't. I know IT professionals who cannot use a Hexadecimal editor. And they are called "professionals?" Not in my book and REALLY SAD IMO.

Years ago in my wife's company they had a program that figured out engineering costs in Deutschmarks. Along came the EURO. The new program to convert "DM" to read "EU" was over 1000 EU and not even owned by the original company. BS. I opened the HEX-editor and fixed the old program in 10 minutes (took 5 minutes for the machine to boot). Their IT guy did not have a clue. Now in fairness I was a complete wizard in DOS and Windows up to version 3.11 often getting into it and "fixing" it to work better, but after that, I did not keep up at all. Just did not have the time.

In the not too distant future, I predict the IT profession as it is today will die (again). 85+% of all IT Pros today just "dittle." They just know where to kick (click) the box and pay MS or CISCO or whomever, BIG bucks for a certification that says they "memorized" where to "Click the Box." However, as users become smarter, dittlers will be the first to go. Don't say it cannot happen as it already has in the IT field with the "invention" and fielding of networking and a home computer on every desk. The dittlers who could not adapt became extinct. Many lost their jobs although many more IT jobs were created. It will happen again. A smart(er) user, and they are getting smarter all the time) is the current-level IT PROs worst nightmare.

The writers of software OTOH, will ALWAYS have jobs. The really good ones will make (huge) fortunes.

But who is teaching/learning software writing these days? Almost nobody as near as I can tell.

 

I only discovered the internet around 01/02, only started really using it about 2 years ago! I can't imagine using the internet 10-15 years ago.

 

Don't know about the situation in the US, but over here, programming and IT is mandatory in school for some years now. They begin with Word and Excel and that stuff when they're 12 and move over to the real programming languages in later years.
When I was in school, we didn't have that stuff, so I set up a programming course with some friends when we were... 14 IIRC. We met every friday after school teaching Visual Basic to those who were interested. Did that for 5 years, we had a great time - the headmaster etc loved our commitment and we always had excuses to skip classes we didn't like - "Yeah Mrs. Müller, we know it's an important subject today, but we have to prepare our next programming lesson...."

 

First machine was a TI 99/4 (NOT A) that the parents bought in 79 or so. That was followed by Apples, Commodores, Amigas etc during the Golden Age of strange machinery. I was first 'online' calling BBSs in 84-85 or so. Had a shell account and newsgroup access in the late 80s, and was certainly dismayed when those early posts were suddenly brought out of the past by Dejanews in the early 90s

 

First dial-up was Prodigy around 93.

 

I really began using it on a regular basis around '98. So it's somewhere around 10-11 years.

 

I remember using it in the early-mid 90's in my mom's office at BYU-Hawaii. They all used Macs back then. I didn't realize that I've been using the interwebs for that long, thanks Mr. Gore!

 

Are BBS's, Compuserve and Prodigy really considered the "internet"? If so, then I was on the "internet" in the mid-80's. My brother ran a BBS.

I designed & programmed my first commercial Web site in 1994.