How long have you used the internet for?

[information-ecologist]

I've been online since 1989, beginning with email and electronic conferences on Econet / IGC and the other nodes of the Association for Progressive Communications and have been developing web sites since 1995.

Incidentally, the poll question prompted me to ask the question: When did it become [known as] the Internet?

According to http://www.internethistory.leidenuniv.nl, "When, in 1982 [ARPANET] finally adopts the TCP/IP the Internet is born... a connected set of networks using the TCP/IP standard." However, the name does not appear to have been used much until the early 1990s.The Internet Society (ISOC) was founded in 1992.

 

[greyhound]

Well... Started with a BBC B in 1982 with a 1200/75 modem to bulletin boards - very friendly - My BT land line was very useless - Changed to Cable & Wireless when the cable was laid - whenever the Internet was on Cable I joined - Now happy with broadband.

 

[billybobbbuddy]

How long have I used the internet for?

I have been using the internet for about 7 years now.

 

[icemanx]

as for me I found my first website details and was on the Internet 12months before the website on dial up only
2nd March, 1995 is when I posted my 1st site

was online 12x months before hand when it was published

but was on BBS's that you dialup to even before that when I had a 2200 k modem (very old now)

so I have been on for ages aaaaaaaaahhhhhh that long bloody hell

 

[BigJohnD]

I was trying to remember my first internet account. It was with Win3.1 using NavCIS to access Compuserve. I had one of those octal account numbers. I had 14.4 modem, and at the time there was no local telephone number for access, so it was long distance charges. And there were on-line time charges to CIS. It cost a fortune! Must have been around 1993/4. I remember downloading big (for those day) files for fonts and to update Pagemaker.

Eventually the big players like Adobe set up their own websites and on-line services, and CIS became too expensive to be a mere ISP. Local ISPs sprang, some with 0800 numbers; Windows95 came along and access got easier. I moved to Mersinet (http://www.mersinet.co.uk) around that time largely because it was rumoured they hosted Merseyside Police and were very secure (yeah, right!), and despite various take overs and mergers, I'm still with them. And must be due for a long service discount.

PS: I haven't included my experiences in the 60s with this - 8Kb RAM, 300b modem the size of a suitcase, 1Mb disk drives like a stack of LPS, &c.: http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/events/anniversaries/40th/images/ibm360_67/index.html

 

[Darkelf720]

LOL Shows how old most of us are eh

 

[Jason.369]

11 Years

I got my first computer in 1996 (using Windows 95 OS) ...and got AOL Dial Up later that year (could have even been in 1997) ...so that makes it 11 Years apparently.

 

[historian]

We started to use the internet about 7-8 years ago. We were using an Amiga1200 and the ISP was Demon.
Then we switched to beeb pay as you go for about 2 years. And now we use AOL broadband,been with them for about one year.And so far find them very good and helpful.
historian.

 

[Andrew C]

10+ years

 

[Nobody in particular]

Probably started using it when I was in Year 4 at school - about 7 or 8 years ago. :-S