When did you all first start using the internet and what age where you?

spurious

The Backwards Man wrote: »

1995, Netscape and AltaVista.

..and webcrawler for the rudies. Oh the good old days, with photos loading by the line.

grouchyman

90's some time. Oceanfree when it started. Can anybody remember when this was?

wexie

Early 90's in the days of Windows 3.1, when BSS's still existed (they don't still exist do they?)
Oh and I would have been in my mid teens

NeVeR

it was 1996/1997 I was 15/16 ... All we had was 56k modems !!

I still remember the NTL sales guy knocking on the door selling 1MB broadband.. ( not sure of the year ) .. I think i was one of the first in my area to have the amazing 1MB line !!!

We had to get a second line into the house ( when on dail up ) as i used it all the time.. I remember my telling my that the lead had to be connected to the PC so emails could deliver when I wasn't using it lol... I just didn't want the line taken away.. but the second line sorted that out.

I also remember they gave us free internet.. the phone bill would come out in about 50 pages and the total would be £500/£600 but right under it was a discount for the same amount.

Mutant z

Around about the early 2000s when in my early teens although not regurely until about 5 years after that.

spurious

I remember being told by a Telecom Eireann guru that '4 hours Internet access a day was excessive'. How clueless they were.

Samuel T. Cogley

1996 aged 16 and used it exactly like a dictionary... to look up dirty words.

wexie

Samuel T. Cogley wrote: »

1996 aged 16 and used it exactly like a dictionary... to look up dirty words.

Only words ey?

cavemeister

I remember it clearly - Christmas Day 1996. Got a Gateway 2000 computer from Santa (was for the family but I was the only one who knew how to use it) - It had a Pentium 2 chip in it 90 or 120 - Can't remember but it did have a 56k modem built in and was able to connect via Telecom Eireann dial up Internet CD

wildlifeboy

Peatys wrote: »

1998 i was 20.

Got a shítty job in ibm and they sent us on a week long course to learn email and internet..

Lotus notes and Netscape navigator..

I was also in IBM in 98 and did the same course in ballycoolin

Billy86

wexie wrote: »

Only words ey?

Photoshop clipart porn all day, baby.

"Who ever knew Maggie Thatcher had the body of a 20 year old dancer, and so tanned too! But only from the neck down"

Sleepy

First access was about 95 in a neighbour's Dad's home office and, of course, our first visit was to an early playboy site.

Got more regular access around 97 when we got our own dial-up connection and have barely been off-lince since 98 when I started college.

Back in the late 80's, I remember an uncle of mine who worked for BT letting me onto some form of CB Radio based network that he and some friends had put together around Birmingham that let them share folders of images, text, shareware etc. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen at the time!

AllForIt

I first used the internet in an internet cafe in a shopping centre in Harrow, London, probably 1995. The shopping centre was newly built and the cafe was designed to be all futuristic looking with the monitors being built into star treky type enclosures. I never seen a internet cafe like it since - a lot of money was spent on it to attract ppl to the shopping centre - completely unlike the dingy internet cafe's you see nowadays. I bought some credit and actually I hadn't the first clue what to do when I logged on. Not a clue. I don't think I did anything at all, I just felt embarrassed and pretended to know what I was doing until my credit expired, which thankfully wasn't long. A couple of years later in 1997 I bought my first home desktop PC which had a dial-up modem.

December 25 1998. I was 12

Greybottle

Late 1990 . Working in Germany, the office was connected to systems in the USA. Really kicked off in early 1991 during the first Gulf War. Astonishing the amount of info we got that wasn't being reported in mainstream media.

I never knew it would get as big as it did. Back then it was message boards, you could send a written file, the idea of sending a picture or thousands of them was a pipe dream.

BalcombeSt4

tomofson wrote: »

What year did you all first start using the internet in and what age where you?

Okay I was first introduced to the internet when I was about 7 or 8 in around 99 or 2000 but I took no notice of it back then.

I started using the internet on a permanent basis around 2005 when I was 13.

What about all of you?

I started going to internet cafes when I was about 15/16 in the late 90's/2000 and started using it on regular basis when I got my first home computer in 2003 & got broadband a year later.

BrianD3

Late 1996 in university. 486 PC with Windows 3.1 and Netscape Navigator and Trumpet Winsock. The first thing I looked at were pictures of military aircraft which took ages to load and displayed as 16 or 256 colours. I was underwhelmed initially but quickly got into it. Got my first PC in 1998.

I had first heard of the internet in late 1995, was talking to a girl from a wealthy family (Dublin 4) whose Daddy had got it for her at home.

Actually I probably heard of the internet in about 92/93 when a lad from school wrote an essay on computer networking and how it would change the world but IIRC the term "The Internet" wasn't used in the essay. In any case, I thought it sounded like a load of nonsense.

Hedone

Circa 1997/1998 when I was about 13, remember going to the library with friends, first thing I looked up was my favourite band backstreet boys! Then year or two later I signed up for MSN and yahoo messenger, that's when the fun started - loved chatting to people all around the world.

Chancer3001

my friend got the internet when we were about 11.

we went straight online and typed www. jennifer aniston naked .com

we just assumed every celebrity was naked online.

Then we had to call a 3rd friend becuase we couldnt get rid of that address from the address bar every time we typed in www.....

hilarious looking back

Cee-Jay-Cee

We got a PC and internet in summer 97, I used to mess about on it for an hour or so in the evenings but got bored easily as there wasn’t a whole lot of content back then.

MSM chat rooms were fun, I’d usually go to the religious ones and wind up the people there.

Ultimate Seduction

2008 aged 19. Never had a computer in the house growing up. My friend in school had it in the late 90s, He could tell us the results of wrestling matches on a Tuesday, that wouldn't be aired till the Friday night on TV. Mind blowing at the time . Crazy how much we take it for granted now.

tricky D

Blazer wrote: »

Now who remembers yahoo chat rooms and paddynet?

I did most of the admin behind Paddynet and probably have most of Paddynet content and backend backed up on some floppies or Zipdisks at the bottom of some dusty box in the attic.

mookishboy

Sinclair zx80 to start with then a commodore 64 and an amiga which i still have.
Then on to supporting windows 3.1 and NT 3.5 and windows for workgroups in RTE. craziest network ever.. Novell and win networks side by side ethernet and token ring randomly strung every where, Ahh them were the days.. Contracting for £300 a day in the early 90's
Jim Kirk buddy you were a good lad...

WomanSkirtFan8

From memory, February 2001 had to use the dial-up connection which meant plugging and unplugging phone and internet cables seperately. That's something that I don't miss.:)

Vladimir Poontang

1998

Windows and a Dell with a Pentium 2 and a 56k modem

Then college in UL in the compsys labs circa 2000/2001

The amount of hardcore porn on the computers in UL was astonishing. You'd be in a lab unsupervised doing "programming" but in reality everyone was either playing Quake or watching absolute filth.

BlackEdelweiss

www. sex.com

The very first letters I typed into the internet in about 97.

BlackEdelweiss

In 2000 I was setting up a web site for online restaurant and take away menus as there was nothing like that available at the time. We were ready to launch and some guy down the country launched something similar. I thought, ah well that is that idea gone now, no point in putting up 2 sites the same on the internet. Little did I know where the online food ordering industry would go in the following years. I still kick myself a bit about that. I also discussed a concept with my brother about setting up a remote storage facility with loads of servers where people could save all their photos, music etc without filling up their small hard drives. I'm pretty sure that concept never took off though!!!

jimbobaloobob

I remember asking a girl for her contact number in 1999 when I worked as a tour guide. When she gave me back an email address for contact I thought she was taking the p1ss
Threw it in the bin.
Had used the Internet in college 96-99 but was clueless to email.

tomofson

Blazer wrote: »

97, company I started with has an direct line to a pipe and we had about 10 meg download.
Dial up at home seemed so slow and it would be 2005 before I could get a whopping 3 meg at home.

Now who remembers yahoo chat rooms and paddynet?

I'm guessing paddynet was an Irish based chatroom.