[Squinky]

I picked 1993, though with a margin of error of two years.

[colpet]

2001

[Jelena]

I know for sure I was using the internet in 1999 since I was studying and using the internet a lot for communication with my professors and other studets. But I can't recall when we actually connected. It could have been in 1998.

[Jazhara7]

I picked 1996, though I can't guarantee that that is exact. But sometime around that time (I was 9 years old at that time, I just noticed.)


-

[shortleg]

Had to of been back in 93 or 94 on a 2400bps modem. The good old days

[Gordon Bennett]

Originally Posted by Jazhara7

You mean This one?

Yes, that's the very one! Doesn't do anything at all. Even when the very idea of navigating the internet with a mouse and graphics seemed new and exciting, that page wasn't at all. Fantastic.

[Cold-Factor]

Looks like there's quite a bit of 1996 first time internet users here, as that was also the year I was first connected to the internet. Back in the day with my Windows 95/Dos era PC with 32 MB Ram, Pentium 166 Mhz, and 33.6 K modem, I remember vividly logging onto the internet for the first time in Oct 1996. The first site I went to was incidentally Sierra.com. I first started websurfing by typing random urls like sierra.com, lucasarts.com, etc, and only after a couple of weeks did I discover something called a "search engine". The internet back then was a much simpler and safer time, without rampant spyware and commericialism. Not to enlist any laughter from anyone, but back in the day, the Internet was viewed as a mythical place and I had a lot of people in my grade 7 class ask me questions about things that seem very stupid today; mostly ideas obtained through watching the movie, "Hackers". 10 years later, and I'm still going strong!

[Melkor]

My dad was a beta-tester for 'Internet In a Box', I think the browser was called 'Air Mosaic' if I'm not mistaken (the one that eventually became Netscape?). I think it was in 92 or 93. I remember having a blast at the early message boards, talking to people from all over was so awesome at the time.

My dad has been in computers since the seventies, so we always had a PC and a modem, and we'd browse the BBS' of the programming geeks my dad knew, downloading all kinds of stuff. I remember my dad was always so angry with the size of the games at the time, he was like; "Holy shit, the game is over one megabyte! That's gonna take all night!". That was when games started to get graphic, the early Sierra days and the like. But even before that, the games over 200kb was quite a drag to get down. A kb in those days felt much bigger than a megabyte does now. Strange to think about it in retrospect.

I'm currently downloading two videos at the same time, both about 200Mb in size. They'll be done in a couple of minutes, and I just started them when I started writing this post. Haha, pretty insane. Just imagine us sitting here ten years from now laughing at videos at 200Mb. "WTF, 200Mb? They must have been compressed, and in some kind of ridiculous resolution".

[Jake]

Oops bah I checked 1994 but I'd used various text only internet services at the public library pre-1992. So I fail at polls.

[fov]

I voted for 1996, which is when I went to college and discovered the internet via the high speed connection in my dorm room. I remember thinking it was a big rip-off that I had to go buy an ethernet cable at the campus store for $30 to be able to use it.

We had Prodigy when I was a kid (circa 1992) but I only used it with my dad's help, and then only to get hints for Sierra games. So I don't really count that. I also dialed up to a bbs to chat in... oh, maybe 1989? We paid by the minute so my parents only let me use it for like 15 mins at a time...

[bysmitty]

1993 here. LOL, I remember paying by the minute too. I got in all kinds of trouble for leaving the connection running so I could download shareware games like commander keen and duke nukem.

...bysmitty

[undeaf]

1995 (or perhaps 94). I first connected with a 33mhz 486SLC cyrix(ie. the cheaper than AMD chip that was atrocious at games), a 14.4K modem, and a 256kB video card(which could only run windows in 16 colors). I used BBSes a bit before that.

[Stoofa]

It was 1993 or 1994. I was 15 or 16 and not allowed to even LOOK at the internet by myself. I didn't even know how to get into the net at that time anyway, so I just used the computer to play Monkey Island. I remember once my step mother left her connection open overnight by accident and got a whopper of a fee that month. We used PINE for e-mail. I didn't get a Hotmail account until 1996 or 1997. How did people afford an internet addiction before the invention of unlimited connections? Once I got a bill for $400 for internet usage for one month.

[bulldog]

Mine was 1999

[mouse on mars]

In 1997. Just in time for some Diablo multiplayer addiction.

[SSH]

1991, when I started at University doing Computer Science

[Holly]

I guessed around 1995. I know my family had internet back in the 80's, but I believe I did not navigate it myself until the 5th grade. I used computers a lot, but before the 5th grade, there wasn't much for a 5th grader to do online. I think my parents and I would get on MSN's The Zone and play card games. One year later, I downloaded AIM, and have been addicted to the internet every since.

[D.C.]

'97 - was in the 7th grade.

[After a brisk nap]

I first tried the Internet at a tech convention in 1994, surfing the at that time pathetic web for all of 15 minutes (and pages took about a minute to load). A little bit later my local library put in Internet-connected computers. By 1997 a friend of mine was online, and I would download USENET dumps to read at my leisure. I must have got connected at home late that year or early 1998, but by that time I had been using the Internet for years.

[Not A Speck Of Cereal]

1987 for me.