Anyone nostalgic about the old dial-up internet?

A question about : Anyone nostalgic about the old dial-up internet?

Hi,

Although I wouldn't go back have fibre broadband now I look back with nostalgia sometimes on the first computer I got and going on the internet on dialup for the first times.

Although I was a bit late getting a computer year 2000 was a really big adventure.

as regards a computer hadn't a clue, must have had windows 98 for at least six months before I attempted to drag a file into nero software to burn.

Didn't have a clue about windows 98 either even switching it on was a big deal and the dreaded blue screen, seemed to happen when you were driving software too hard so to speak. Some later informed me that the blue screen was because Microsoft had written the kernel code that way.

and oh the internet.

The dial of the modem and hum as it linked up to your isp (the shopping around trying to get the cheapest one too) and the fascination as the page slowly loaded on the big at the time 17 inch CRT monitor.

The sending of an email to people you wouldn't dream of sending one to nowadays, just because I was able to do it.

The software, I remember a little program called BitMagic, you downloaded it and it sort of delivered little cartoons and animations to a little tv kind of display that opened on desktop, It was ad sponsored I think but how I loved that program.

Then the stuff that I installed such as software that continually displayed ads on the top of my browser and the frustration of trying to get rid of it, until I saw it in add/remove programs in control panel.

Finally I joined aol (aolhell as someone christened them) and couldn't believe it when they offered me broadband .5mbps for the sum of Ј19.99 a month, I thought it was a scam when they rang me as usual price was Ј27.99 a month I believe.

And the message boards on aol were friendly one very regular contributor called Rodger, often wondered if he was the same guy who used to call into Talksport radio often.

Those were the days, fond memories but still wouldn't go back.

martin57

Best answers:

• Wheeeeeeee kapong kapong kapong shhhhhhhhhhSHHHHHHshhhhhhhh ...... that's my memory of dial-up!
• Fibre optic, one doesn't look back from fibre optic.
• I remember looking at the World Wide Web in, maybe 1992, and thinking "not a lot here, rather pointless really".
  That was using lynx through CIX on Windows Terminal at 300 baud.
• I miss everything about dialup except the speed and the cost.
  I miss the oldstyle web design: text and pictures on a page, that wrapped at the right-hand edge, start at the top and read to the bottom. Now everything's web apps and rounded corners and auto-refreshing and entertainment instead of information and web designers whose sites can't cope with the fact that my browser window ratio is non-standard, so I lose a chunk off the side or have to scroll around a lot.
  Forum software/comments sections/etc that can't handle threading properly, or doesn't mark new messages in threads. EG: I like reading the comments on stories in The Guardian. If you go back to read the comments on a story that you've read earlier, you have to read the whole comments section again to see new messages in sub-threads.
  Give me Usenet any time.
  And if anyone knows an Android app, Windows program or website that will let me read Twitter by: 1) Asking me (or better, autodetecting) when I last read Twitter (or letting me select my own date) and then 2) Showing me tweets from the specified time, oldest first, with new tweets beneath old tweets so I can read straight down the screen (like I learnt to on a page when I was three years old), please tell me. Please. (I blame Outlook for defaulting to top-posting and forcing people to expect that the reply would be before the original message. No. Did anybody learn to read by starting halfway down the page and reading to the end, then reading from the top of the page to halfway down? I bet they didn't.)
  Basically, I think we geeks had this internet thing right in about 1996. Then it got ruined when we let normal people on to it.
• Fond memories of my parents telling me to get off the internet so that they could use the phone. Or picking up the phone without warning and cutting me off during what, at the time, seemed like a really important MSN Messenger chat...
• When i first got my computer i remember thinking 1p a minute, that seems a good dead rather than spending loads every month on a direct debit that i'll hardly ever use.
  Wow if i was paying 1p a minute for all the time i'm logged on it would cost me a fortune now.
• This is for you guys - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsNaR6FRuO0
  Me? I'm nostalgic for the BBC Micro and my dad's old IBM 286. Ah, the halcyon days before mobile phones and t'internet.
  BBC Micro nostalgia https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcRpxrl7TNY
• I was a late comer to home computing as I could use my work PCs and Easy Internet cafes.
  I got a laptop in January 2006, and BT dialup. I still remember my excitement at sending my first email from home.
  It worked very well for a while, then got slower and slower. I cancelled my landline and moved to pre-paid Three Mobile Broadband in autumn 2008.
  I still miss the handshaking noise that the dial-up modem used to make.
• The first time I went online was in 1995 and I spent about 45 minutes trying to download a 30 second clip of an Oasis track before giving up as it was taking too long...
• I remember how annoying it was to phone home from work and constantly getting the engaged signal because OH was always on the internet. (No mobile then). Don't see how anyone could be nostalgic for that
• Remeber the days of dialup and leaving it on all night to get a couple of songs from napster.
• In a word ... NO.
• It was fun at the time, until after a month of dialup internetting in chat rooms, looking at sites on Netscape and gophering, that month's BT bill came in at ... Ј120. For a month. That was a light bulb moment!
• In a broad Yorkshire accent:
  "And you try telling that to the young people today, and they won't believe you"