Reminiscences of the Internet

[threegee]

Our first Internet connection was £45 a month at a heady 14,400 bits/second! Mind you that was a theoretical maximum, you never got that sort of speed in practice.

Oh yes, and you had to pay for the phone call at BT rip-off rates on top of that! We had a four figure phone bill one month. There was also a download limit - yes, seriously!

I guess even AOL is better than that.

[Sw@lnalla]

Our first Internet connection was £45 a month at a heady 14,400 bits/second! Mind you that was a theoretical maximum, you never got that sort of speed in practice.

Oh yes, and you had to pay for the phone call at BT rip-off rates on top of that! We had a four figure phone bill one month. There was also a download limit - yes, seriously!

I guess even AOL is better than that.

1994..... A block of 90 hours cost C$15. with a 14k modem, no extra phone charges. by 2004 this had increased to C$10 a month unlimited on a 56k modem again with no extra phone charges.

[Mr Darn]

i remember my old "BT Click" days, where it was a 56k dial up and a penny a minute!

And i thought that was GREAT! lol

[threegee]

My first "on-line experience" was browsing round the Zenith "Heathkit" store on the North side of Dallas in February 1982. I heard relays clicking in a quiet corner of the mostly deserted place, and when I walked over to investigate discovered they'd lashed up an electronic bulletin board. You could see the messages coming in on a dumb terminal. There was probably only one or two lines and of course on POTS (Plain Old Telephone System) no way to share access - you just had to wait for a free line to read the board and post a reply. However the idea instantly appealed to me and I just had to do something back in the UK.

I'd actually gone there to buy one of their terminals, and amongst other items brought back a kit of parts (including the green phosphor CRT) in the overhead luggage rack of a Braniff 747! Back in the UK I imported an early 300 baud free-standing modem. There never was very much to connect to in the UK, and it was excruciatingly expensive to access US services. Just getting a bit of text dribbling back was an achievement. But... one day !!!

[Dave]

First i ever saw was on the Amiga B boards with ripped off games and demos, musta been 88 - 89 . wasnt the web then tho i think... then i fell out of computers for a long while, didnt get a e mail address until 2000 .. its good tho isnt it