How long have you "been online"?

[JanMichael]

Poll question: How long have you "been online"?

I just realized that some folks have been emailing and such for ages while I'm relatively new since I got online in 1998.

I really didn't hit message boards until 1999 or so either. DU was a LATE 2001 thing for me.

EDIT: I should add that I had a Timex Sinclair back in 1984 (?) that had a modem but I can't for the life of me imagine what I connected too???

Poll result (115 votes)
Today was my first day!	(0 votes, 0%)	Vote
Under a year.	(2 votes, 2%)	Vote
1 to 2 years.	(1 votes, 1%)	Vote
2 to 5 years.	(2 votes, 2%)	Vote
5 to 7 years.	(14 votes, 12%)	Vote
7 to 10 years.	(31 votes, 27%)	Vote
10 to 15 years.	(46 votes, 40%)	Vote
15 to 20 years.	(13 votes, 11%)	Vote
I invented the web.	(3 votes, 3%)	Vote
Other.	(3 votes, 3%)	Vote

[hickman1937]

1. Bought my computer in july 04.

Followed a link to DU about a month later.

[intheflow]

2. 10-15 years.

Eleven, to be exact. I was thinking it had been only about 8, but then I heard it was the 10 year anniversary of the OJ Simpson case, and I started my first job with access to the Internet eleven years ago.

[khashka]

3. Just a little over twenty years

which is why I'm such a cranky old bastard. Don't even get me started - you kids ruined the whole damn thing!


Khash.

[billyskank]

31. Do you remember the September That Never Ended, khash?

[ghostsofgiants]

4. About 8 years...

I think it was '97 when I first went online.

[In_The_Wind]

5. I started emailing and searching the web in the spring of 2002.

[anarch]

6. I don't have the internet n/t

[JanMichael]

10. You KNOW what I mean...

!!!

[Graf Orlok]

7. About 11-12 years ago.

So basically half my life.

[Left Is Write]

8. I started chatting on IRC in 1995.

[MrSlayer]

9. I was on Q-Link, Compuserve and BBS Boards over 20 years ago.

Went off for awhile and came back to the "new" internet about 8 years ago.

[aePrime]

41. I was on CompuServe over 20 years ago as well

Or rather, my dad and brother were, because I was really young at the time and didn't spend a lot of time online. I did spend some time online though.

I remember a time when my brother was downloading a game over our 300 baud modem. He made me watch it so that we could sign off when it was done. He didn't tell me it'd take an hour!

I've had an internet connection most of my life. Oddly enough, I'm now a computer science graduate student.

[BikeWriter]

11. Let's see... 1998, I think. I got on to "research for my books."

I've done more of everything else than research!

[CatholicEdHead]

12. Wow, has it been 10 years already?

[seemunkee]

13. Compuserve ~1989

[hyphenate]

14. 1989

I had a 100 baud modem, a 16MHz processor and a 30MB hard drive. It was an 8088 Epson Equity One + and it was both "fast" at that time and had a "big" hard drive. It was a DOS interface.

Compuserve used a text GUI and I learned early on not to try to run Norton Utilities Defrag while in a program. I lost quite a bit, and had to reformat the hard drive. Working with 5 1/4" floppies took a VERY long time to do it.

Besides CompuServe, which cost an arm and a leg at the time (the Net was by the hour then, not unlimited) and dialing up local BBS, I learned of shareware early on, and took to it like the proverbial fish to water.

I'd worked on computers since 1980, but 1989 was the first I actually owned one. And my system then cost $2600.

[lpbk2713]

15. Started on BBS's with a 14.4 modem about 20 years ago.

[Roland99]

19. 14.4 modem in 1985?

[Heidi]

16. About 20 minutes. It's a cold morning, so I slept late. (nt)

[billyskank]

29. LOL! You ass!

[Misunderestimator]

17. Thanks. Now I feel old.

[Roland99]

18. Logged onto my first BBS back in 1985 via my 300 baud modem!

[hunter]

20. Oooh, a timex sinclair with a modem!

You were probably connected to a local BBS or something like GEnie. GEnie was a good one for computers and terminals that couldn't display eighty columns. You could set GEnie to twenty columns if you wanted too. (The timex sinclair displayed 32 columns.)

I had accounts with GEnie, Delphi, and AOL back when AOL was still based on Geoworks. I'm pretty sure Delphi was the first national service to connect to the internet. For a few years after I graduated from college and lost my student accounts I prowled the internet by the good graces of well-connected friends. (And sometimes I stretched their patience very, very thin. I always have this nagging fear that someone will out me with some link to my early witings... I was sometimes a bad dog.)



Published in The New Yorker July 5, 1993

I first logged onto "the internet" in 1979, the same year USENET was invented. Your poll doesn't go back that far, so maybe I actually helped invent the internet in some small way. I do remember I was pretty much in the way when BSD Unix was released into the wild.

[qnr]

21. 1981 - Atari 800, Dow Jones Information Service - and local BBSs

Edit: Strangely enough, I still remember my username and password for DJIS, which I only used for a few months before going over to CompuServe and GEnie.

[billyskank]

22. First discovered the internet in 1994

during the time of the Great Internet Explosion. I had just gone to university and had access for the first time. This was also the time when the world wide web really started to take off. At first I used Usenet newsgroups a lot, and an internet BBS at Southampton university called Monochrome.

[SarahB]

23. Almost 10 years.

[enigmatic]

24. 1994

started out on a webtv; I admit I miss not having a 27 inch monitor, but I'd never go back...

[njdemocrat106]

25. Since September 6, 1994

I remember it as the day before I started 8th grade (don't ask me how I remember the date I started 8th grade). Before that, I started on Prodigy in May 1993 (I bought a Hayes 2400 baud modem with some money I saved up) and discovered BBSs soon after (and I got kicked off the 2nd second BBS I called a few minutes after I joined. If anyone here remembers the "Bastard Operator from Hell" stories, the sysop of this BBS wrote one himself for the BBS callers to "enjoy", but it was basically more of a racist, homophobic, and overly profane rant than a story. I was only 12 years old, but I was already prone to being offended by racial slurs, so I wrote a letter to the sysop. Turned he was watching me write the letter all along, and broke into chat mode just to tell me he's locking me out.) Looking back, I still think BBS sysops were some of the biggest anal-retentive, control-freak pricks that I've come across (I got booted off another BBS for uploading "old" files, and not particpating in his lame-ass, practically non-existant message board).

Glad to get that off of my chest.

:off rant:

[ismnotwasm]

26. My husband STILL has an old Commadore 64 motherboard

In our shed. He won't part with it. It was a system of about 500 people at that time. I remember thinking it was stupid. This was the early eighties. I think we started the internet in 1993. Anybody want a commadore? Just kidding, my huband would kill me.

[chknltl]

27. March of this year

is when my kid got me this computer. It is my first one and prior to this I can claim to have been online on a scale measured in hours, not days!... (Friends showing me the wonders of the internet).
I got addicted to the big DU shortly thereafter. (A link in Truthout.com led me here so if you want to blame someone go holler at them).

[yowzayowzayowza]

28. Did my first telecommuting on...

PC Anywhere II; compuserve/bbs access well before that.

[Graf Orlok]

30. When was the internet first available to the general public?

[billyskank]

32. 1993-1994

Great Internet Explosion

The mainstreaming of the Internet in 1993-1994. Used normally in time comparatives; before the Great Internet Explosion and after it were very different worlds from a hacker's point of view. Before it, Internet access was expensive and available only to an elite few through universities, research laboratories, and well-heeled corporations; after it, everybody's mother had access.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/G/Great-Internet-E...

[Z_I_Peevey]

33. Since 1997.

And I still don't know from shinola, as far as computer/technical stuff goes. But I get by.

Thanks, Al!

[tjwmason]

34. September 1997

When I started at university.

I arrived knowing little more than how to switch on a computer and write a short essay for school - by Christmas of that year I could write a fair bit of H.T.M.L., e-mail, surf the web blah-blah-blah.

[Mutley]

35. I've been off and on since 1996.

I've been on straight through since 2002-03, can't remember which. Whatever year I got my new computer.

[Qanisqineq]

36. going on 5 hours now

oh, you mean total... probably since 1992

[Wcross]

37. I started out on Prodigy back in the early 90's.....

I think I had a 9600 baud modem at the time. It was painful.
My Dad had an Amiga computer in 1980 and he had a 2.4 baud modem hooked up to it but all that was available was message boards.

[bikebloke]

38. Since whenever the Seattle library made it available

And I've had my Hotmail account from before MicroShite bought them. Alas, I'm on every spam list in the galaxy.

[Rabrrrrrr]

39. A tad over 20 years

though that was only dialup BBS type places. Being truly on-line, that is, connected to what was the beginning of the Internet, puts me a little under 20 years.

[mvd]

40. 7-10 years

Think I started around 1996.

[Dervill Crow]

42. My aol s/n was my first name with no numbers after it.

Before that I was on Prodigy and before that the bulletin boards.

I may not have invented the internet, but I probably did a great deal to finance its advancement before the ISPs went to a flat monthly rate.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

43. Since '81, over 20 years.

Posted on USENET groups via university connection ARPANET back then.