What's your first experience of the Internet?

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Way back in October 1999, my dad got a telephone line and extended it to our newly-bought 500MHz PC. My uncle was to come round later and help set up everything (as he was the only other person in our family to have Internet access). After setting up our FreeServe account, we set up our e-mail addresses, and then, finally, got to browse the web. The first site we browsed was the BBC Radio 1 website, where we downloaded a 400kb screensaver, which took about 5 minutes to download. We didn't know how to get it to run, as it was in a .zip file.

Primary school I think.

Email in 1993 on a VM system. May have been early 94 to. Oh to my sister who was at another college.

can't remember '95

It was sometime in 1999 I think, used numerous ISPs, such as Virgin Net, Freeserve, Netscape Online, and FreeNetName (that one gave me a free domain to use ), I got introduced to IRC that same year

Early 1997, doing a search for something and getting a shedload of irrelevant results in return.

My first Pre-Internet network experience was at an acquaintance's house on my 18th birthday in 1985. Somebody had given him a scammed UID/PWL from an network called The Source, and I spent a few hours talking to people in California, and writing whimsical BASIC programs. --The things you could do with a Wyse Terminal, a 1200BPS modem, and a Dead Kennedy's album playing loudly, back in the day.

It was probably in 1996 when I began college and used one of the school's computer labs. I didn't get my own internet connection until 2004.

OMG.. Back in 1994, running Windows 3.11 and a 14.4k modem.

I remember downloading the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3-D from, I believe, either Happypuppy or Tucows.

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I remember that it took a seemingly interminable time to transfer to a new page and to download anything.

I came to see Kasparov playing against Deep Blue, a huge fighting and a great event at the net!

1993, when I was in junior high, dialing into a VAX at the local university. Gopher was the hot new protocol.

It was about a year later that I got a PPP account and spent countless hours with Trumpet Winsock, NCSA Mosaic, and some random Win3.1 telnet and ftp clients.

When I was in jr high, around 2000

Using MSDOS-based terminal emulation to do email and play on MUDs via Unix servers, in 1988. That was about all there was to do on the Internet in those days. And people laughed at me for using it.

When I got my own first computer in 1995. I was on Compuserve (disdaining America Online as too dumbed-down), but quickly found Compuserve too limiting & went to one of the news homepages available at the time, maybe MSN's page. Now I have a lot of favorites, look at news through several services, and use Google to search.

I first worked on in-house corp. computer systems (database type of stuff) as far back as 1983. By 1990 I was, at work, on sort of 'closed-net' systems, what were known at that time as the airline computer systems, working in the hotel reservations industry. Worked with maybe 6 or 7 different systems at one time; it was pretty cool. I really enjoyed doing the database work without people looking over my shoulder all the time, and had a couple of good friends out of the 20 or so who worked in the dept. Later on, I did training, writing & became dept. supervisor, but left the company when I got married & moved out of state. I was dealing with a lot of depression & anxiety at the time, though, so don't know whether I would have lasted there or not. My employment since then was very spotty, & I've been on disability since 2001, at times working just a few hours a week as a dog trainer (kept me from going completely nuts with lack of something to do). Later, a divorce & other circumstances got me out of the beloved dog training & I guess i'm going completely nuts with lack of something to do.

Gee, did I get off-topic, or what? Anyway, that's how the computer thing all started for me . . . .

I was on the 'internet' before it existed. In 1979, I was 12 and hanging out at my dad's school (he was a teacher). he had a radio shack 'dumb terminal' attached to an acoustic coupler modem (you stuck a regular dial phone handset in). I logged on and started chatting with other school students over the LAUSD's own systems. From there I went on to 'real' computers and the rest is history. (met my husband over a text based dial up BBS system in 1991!).

It's so much easier to communicate via computer than it is face to face.