Your earliest memories of email/internet

[Thepigeonsarecoming]

I was at university, the internet was nothing but text and boring. But we could send an email. Although since I had to use a log in on a uni computer I’d call home to see if if was received. Anyone else?

And most people at my university didn't have email accounts or even computer access, it was just because my course was quite technical that we had it.
So I had no-one to email anyway!

We had technology classes in the last couple of years of secondary school so that would have been around 1994+. We studied databases which were basically just inputting address data in about 4 fields.

In 1997ish my dad bought me my own computer - from Tiny. You selected it and the monitor, base unit, keyboard and mouse all came as a massive package that you had to set up - it seemed so complicated

I used Celebdaq to buy and trade celebrities if anyone else remembers that

OMFG I had clean forgotten all about it but I played that too!

Celebdaq omg was addicted to it

I did a degree in Computer Science and graduated in 1995. I had Freeserve at home in the early 90s, it was all text and no graphics. I had an email address and used newsgroups a lot.

My dissertation in my final year was about the Internet being used for online shopping in the future. I mocked up a clothes store, my lecturer asked me if I honestly thought people would buy things from the internet that they had not seen in an actual shop

Had a computer at home from mid 80s but clear memory of being taught how to use a search engine (yahoo search engine) in sixth form in around 1998. And that moment of feeling the possibilities were endless!
Then the old dial up AOL thing at home at around the same time. And the chat rooms which were fun!

I’m about to 1995 we had just one computer with it at school. My friend and I would go and talk to boys in the chat rooms 😄😄

Ha, do we read all the same threads @jamestkirkcompatible? Or do we just read every thread there is?

We had AOL - ‘you’ve got mail’

I used to love the chat rooms a/s/l but there were so many pervs and likely paedophiles!!

A friend had compuserve and their chat rooms were less attached - from memory you could put in any handle, we used to enjoy trolling people (well, we were 12)

Neopets was also a great game

Good thread!

First time I accessed the net was at university in the late 90s. Initially on their PCs/Macs, and then I got my own PC. These machines (including my own) didn't have dial-up, but a much faster connection. It pre-dated broadband and download speeds were often around 320kb/s (roughly equivalent to 3mbit). Napster was big business back then and downloading an MP3 took just seconds. For comparison of internet speeds, home broadband didn't reach 3mbit until the mid-2000s.

Then I went back home for the summer holidays. The only option there was 56k dial-up which was a fraction of the speed that I was used to, but sadly it was the norm. The dialling sound was the same as the sound that a fax machine made.

Web pages (HTML) looked like Word documents, and you could edit/save HTML pages in Word too. There wasn't a dominant search engine back then like Google is now. There were lots of them like Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Yahoo, Dogpile, Ask Jeeves, Altavista and Hotbot. The instant messengers were AIM, ICQ, IRC and Yahoo IM. I think MSN was just about there too but that might have been early 00s, not late 90s.

The scourge of the internet back then was pop-up ads and personal web pages such as Geocities, Fortune City and Angelfire. Internet providers issued you with you own webspace, so I made my own page instead of using ad-ridden Geocities etc.

Internet browsers were Netscape and Internet Explorer.

My email address was my university-issued one. The program we used for that was called Simeon.

1995/6- working a computer was part of my teacher training. I cried because I couldn't turn the fucking thing on ( I was still getting over PPP /PPD) when sat in front of one with tutor behind me asking why.
I went home and bought a Compaq Presario intel computer. It cost me £1500 ....lot of money now but mega bucks then.
It had a dial up modem I didn't use until six months after I got it.

I was the only person I knew with an email address. My dad said it was an expensive fad. I hated the fact i missed phone calls when I was online so I got a gizmo that flashed or beeped to say someone was trying to call me.

Yes I remember ICQ

Basic websites with no graphics. Lots of buzzes and whistles.
I still have my first hotmail email account....

And DH says he used to work on mainframes ( Barclays) in the early 1980s that looked like wardrobes

Born in the early nineties and I remember the whole class of 30 students sitting round one computer doing maths in year one.

At Uni 93-96. I didn't use email or internet. There were computer labs with rows of pcs. Chat room type thing, DH's geeky housemate used to go in there overnight and talk to people in America.

@blosstree I was born in 1968 and we didn't have computers at all in the school....we sat at our desks with a cardboard QWERTY keyboard and the teacher drew flowcharts on the board...

Can anyone beat my DH?
He did a computer technology degree starting in 1975.

I remember being charged if you went over so many web pages. AOL, MSN, Dial up and the amazing windows 95

Mid 90s. Conversation among me, a friend and a nerdy acquaintance. Nerdy acquaintance (a guy) enthusiastically explaining how the internet will take over the world and we’ll soon be doing everything on computers, from shopping to communication, working and all the rest. Me and friend pretending to look interested, but subtly exchanging knowing glances and both of us thinking the guy is basically a massive weirdo who talks nonsense, lives in a fantasy world, reads too much science fiction and needs to be sent to a tropical island on a holiday to calm down and think like a normal human being again.

And we were absolutely right....

I remember sneakily logging into Yahoo Mail at school and emailing my boyfriend a few classes away (2001)

I first got the internet in 1997 and Yahoo was my homepage until 2006 I found it really hard to change my homepage 😂

Earlyish 90s there was one connected PC at work where we would all take turns to email (assuming our clients were on email). This was next to the fax machine. Mid 90s I was studying a remote course which used Lotus Notes to upload/download work, all connected to a modem so make sure no one was on the home phone. Ran it all on an Amstrad beige PC . I've been using email for long enough to have my actual name as an email address which is quite ageing in itself. I used to use Dogpile or Ask Jeeves for search engines and YY to the website under construction signs. What was that all about ? Pre internet I used electronic typewriters with one line of memory in the 80s and soon after moved to quite sophisticated Philips word processors and Wordperfect. This was pretty rare at the time.

Although I’ve just remembered using the computer at primary school and the edges of the paper had perforated strips with holes on! Pretty sure the paper was joined from sheet to sheet - not 100% sure

😆

Grumpy probably. I was using paper like that in the mid-late 80s for work. We had to book 1 or 2 hr sessions on the computer. So you had to type accurately and know what code you wanted. Then if it didn't compile or run properly you printed it out and looked through it to find the bugs ready for your next session...

I'd used a closed network for a while at work, so was really excited to get my own computer at home, some time in the 90s. I joined AOL, they sent you a disc through the post IIRC!

I loved the bleeps of the dial up connection, the sound of my doorway into the world opening.

Web sites' pages were all text. I remember the first time I heard a sound, it was of seagulls screeching, I was absolutely stunned.

It was on the website of a print workshop on the North East coast, and apparently they were able to choose one sound for their page.

I had an email address from the beginning, I had it as part of my letter head for years! At first, hardly anyone knew what they were, even places like solicitors didn't seem to grasp the possibilities of email.

Ah, the sound...