[tsa]

I guess it was 1993 or 1992. I used email to stay in contact with my friends who did an assignment at a university in England. I didn't get on the World Wide Web before 1995, when I started work. I remember being very disappointed at what I could find on the Web. That was the year the Web started to become popular with home users and everybody who knew a bit of HTML had to make a home page. Searching for useful information with WebCrawler usually yielded a lot of these homepages, which were often full of names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses. You don't see that often nowadays. Soon after 1995 the web expanded explosively, and more and more companies got on it. That was when it really became interesting and useful. I read a lot of Slashdot back then (I still do).

[aries323]

I think it was in 1998. However it wasn't from my home computer. It was from a computer at work that had a fast internet connection. (something like maybe 90/kb or 180/kb pr. second, I think). It could have been in 1997, but I don't think so.

I remember getting my own computer in 1998, and my own internet connection in 1999. I had this from 1999-2000, I think. It was with a now long gone company (orange or mobilix, I think). Anyway due to some finacial troubles, I had to take year or so of from the internet from 2000 to 2001.
I could still access the internet from work, though. And that's how I learned to use the internet . I used to searched for hours and hours after walktroughs to Legend of Kyrandia, Baldur's Gate 1 (and 2) and other games as well.

Way back the there still was a place called baldur's gate tavern, I think.
(I think it merged into the gamespy.net work or something like that). Gamebanshee was also an independent site before 2001, I think.

Finally after years of waiting, in the autumn of 2001 or 2002, I think, I got a broadband connection that allowed to download stuff with the whopphing speed of I think 256kb/sec. or was it 512kb/sec. Great times! I had a flat rate system that allowed me to use the internet as crazy as I want for a fixed monthly fee.

In 2003, when I got my (new) computer, my internet connections went from 512 kb/sec. to 1 mb/sec. And now (2007) I can download stuff from the internet with a speed of 4mb/sec. Good times I still pay a fixed monthly fee for this. Good times

On a more general note I think it is interesting that the internet of the 1990's sort of went away in the celebration of the year 2000, meaning that, to me, at least, it seems that the big corporations somehow gained control over the internet and games in 2000/2001. And that this means that the games from that on went from being considered games to be considered just another product that could be sold and marketed to the general public. And I do believe that the games released in 1999-2001 somewhat suffered from this kind of thinking. (of course, there are exceptions like TLJ and Syberia, but I do believe that many good and fine rpgs, and probably other games, would have made it, had it not been for this shift in attitude towards games around the year 2000).

[SSH]

1991, at University when I got my email address [email protected] (yes, I know the address is backwards, UK addresses were at the time...) I probably started using the web in 1993 when NCSA Mosaic came out. I remember it didn't take long for the University to start having to block certain web sites, although the newsgroups alt.binaries.pictures.* were already banned before I got there

Here's proof of me in 1992: http://groups.google.co.uk/group/com...89e77eb52ef75d

[Trader]

In 1989 I was 16 going on 17 and my boyfriend at the time was big on the internet, he seemed to talk alot about bulletin boards,I didnt really take that much interest. He did use to get his computer to ring me in the boarding house and sing love songs to me, it was so funny cause the computer voice couldnt prononce the letter L so anything that had the word love came out with an r at the front.

[Trumgottist]

Seems that I'm somewhat of a newbie. I didn't get connected until 1998 (I followed SSH's lead and searched Google's Usenet archives for traces of my activity to refresh my memory).