What was your first experience with the Internet?

You're welcome. Thanks for starting the thread ... it's been interesting reading about other users' experiences.

I've never built a desktop computer, as Neil (retiredlearner) has, but I've never bought a name-brand box, either, preferring to have them built to my specs by folks who knew what they were doing. I've done plenty of hardware customizing and upgrading on my own, though.

My elder son was the sales manager in a university Technology Products Center, and I bought all of my laptops (IBM Thinkpads) through him, passing each one off to friends and relatives as newer models became available.

If I had a dime for every dollar I've spent on hardware, software, and consumables since 1987 I'd have a lot more money in the bank than I do now, but it's been an enjoyable (and frequently frustrating) journey. As I said in a previous post, it's helped to keep the mental muscles stretched.

 

Now in transition from XP on a desktop to 8.1 on a laptop. That's a real stretch!

 

JSS3rd: You're welcome. I'm loving everyone's stories.

fdamp: I don't envy you.

 

This thread started out by being about first uses of the internet, but it seems it's begun to be more about hardware experiences.

For instance, my present desktop, bought from and customized by PCs for Everyone in the spring of 2010, has had the RAM, hard drives, optical drives, and OS upgraded from the original configuration. I also added the eSATA external drive.

The 7 port external USB hub, the 500GB external drive, and two of my three printers (B/W laser and color laser) are switchable between the desktop and laptop.

Why three printers you ask? Total cost for the three was under $235, but I use each differently, mostly because consumables (ink and toner) are so expensive. Most of my printing is B/W, for which I use my Brother HL-2240D. When I need to print in color, I use the Konica Minolta 1600W. I print a lot of photos, for which my Canon PIXMA IP4920 inkjet is used exclusively.

 

When you asked the question about 1st use of the Internet, I forgot to mention it was on a used desktop my employer had to provide for entering our Motor Vehicle safety inspection info to NZTA.
We were on dialup 56Kbs (if you were lucky) and had to wait sometimes up to 5 minutes to get connected.
I remember I often used to ring the NZTA to complain about the loss of work time not realizing then that it was the Telecom Coy problem.
That was W95 in 1998 and then the NZTA upgraded to W98 and we were told we had to upgrade as users. The Boss took the comp to a 'Specialist' who installed the new OS and when the comp came back 3 days later, my first use displayed the message that 'activation' was required.
I followed the instructions and ended with a message saying the OS was a "Pirate copy ". The comp specialist was called to fix the problem and if looks could have killed, I would be dead.
We struggled along with extremely slow internet connection speed and continual dropouts right up until I retired in 2002.
I can laugh about it now as I have a much better understanding of the Technology and I'm connected to UFB (Fibre Optic) which is so much faster and free of problems.
I see Kate had a baby girl overnight. Another Princess to dote over. Neil.

 

I thought the activation requirement started with XP. I hated dialup! I'm so glad to be away from such unreliable Internet.

Congrats to Wills and Kate on their "new installation. "

Here's an article on the old online services (AOL, CompuServe, etc.). http://www.itworld.com/article/2827...ernet--the-golden-age-of-online-services.html

 

Neil ...

IMHO All baby girls are princesses.

 

Jim, we've just seen TV viewing of the little princess 10 hours after Kate went into the hospital!!!
The Royals have it so easy. My wife went through 26 hours of labour - then had a caesarian section to deliver our 'Princess'.
At least my wife didn't get booted out of hospital 10 hours after delivery.

silverwolf107, thanks for the link to the early internet history. Thankfully I didn't get involved in the early years - my start was 1997. Neil.

 

I was printing out market research from Dow Jones News/Retrieval in 1986, using an Osborne 1 computer with a 300-baud modem and an Okidata Microline dot matrix printer.

It was expensive, and rates were lower at night. It strengthened a longtime habit of working at home, with a briefcase that was always full.

More than a decade later, in 1997, I was downloading live photos from the Sojourner rover on Mars, through JPL via Compuserve, using a NEC 386 SX20 with a 28.8 modem.

We are now in a deluge of information. Is it doing us any good? Are we happier? Do we have fewer problems? Are our decisions better? Are we wiser?

The genie is out of the bottle, still asking "Where do you want to go today? "

Leave me alone. I'm going to take a nap.

 

I think our decisions are better informed but not necessarily wiser. We may each have fewer problems. I'm in the process (a very painful one) of transitioning from a comfortable use of Windows XP for 11 years to a new laptop with Win 8.1.

I can't believe how many simple transactions on XP are so bloody complicated on 8.1, I'm fairly computer savvy, having worked in computers since 1966,with two different assembly languages (Singer-Link and Honeywell DDP), three different engineering languages (ALGOL, regular FORTRAN and real-time FORTRAN) but the transition from XP to 8.1 would try the patience of a saint.

I've had the new computer for 2 weeks and I can't reliably get past the opening screen!

Sacre bleu, as the French say!

 

Frank, are you using the Touchpad on your laptop or a mouse? I shut down the Touchpad very early in the piece with my HP Notebook. I find it's much easier with a mouse as quite often moving over/near the pad when typing caused odd things to happen to words.
Using Start8 or Classic Shell makes it easier to navigate and the more you practice the better you get.
I think my Android phones have helped me learn my way round the Tiles/Apps through Touch screen etc.
The difference between the XP and the W8.1 systems for you is a big leap.
I have HDD's with Vista and W7 which I switch to every few days and I think experiencing these OS's helps. Neil.

 

Neil:

The touch-pad is active, but I'm using a cordless mouse most of the time. I'm slowly making my way around. I've cleaned off and re-sized a number of the tiles to make that page fit the screen. The next step is to get my IE identity that I use on the XP box established on the new one, then to get Google Chrome on it also. If I activate IE now, it takes me to an MSN page.

Another couple of weeks should get it working properly, so I can retire "Old Faithful ". I was surprised to find I'd had it for 11 years and even more so to find that I'd paid over $1200 for it and an HP printer.

 

Frank, when you open IE > click on down arrow head next to Home Icon on left upper side of screen. You can change/add your favourite Home page. Neil.

 

My first experience with computers was in 1961 as a repairman for punched
card machines (key punch, collators, reproducers,sorters 407 calculators, etc).

From there i went to operations, programming, system analyst, finally senior
systems analyst. All within the military. Good training.

If i remember right, it was mid/late 1970's was my first personal user contact
with the internet. The military had MILNET which i was vaguely familiar with
but i remember nothing about it now (time marches on).

 

savagcl, thanks for sharing.