What did you think about your first time getting on the internet?

My first computer in the 90's was an Apple, user friendly and bought taking advantage of an educational discount. I thought the internet was amazing, but the computer crashed often due to now laughable memory, and there were fears that you would mess it up horribly if you did something wrong. Early printers were also notoriously balky. The dial-up connection sound I've heard likened to a duck swallowing a kazoo...
 

I had this idea that I could put porn on the internet and millions of people would give me their credit card number that I could charge a subscription fee to, every month, just so they could watch the porn.

Then I realized it was a stupid idea, after all. I would have what, maybe 10 customers?
 
OldFeller said:
I remember when a Google search listed several thousand results.

Each unique.

I used to put in a word, any word, and the results were 100s of different websites featuring that word in all kinds of usages. This was how I discovered new websites and learned new things.

Can't do that today. The only results today are 6 sites offering a definition of the word.
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This just in:

I discovered that if I preface the searched word with, keyword: , I can get different results.

At least I'm finding different websites. I'll have to play around.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
30 Years ago, did you ever think you'd be sitting in front of a TV, typing away? What did you think about your first time getting on the internet? I can do banking and a few other things, but that's about it. What do you think of your computer skills?
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My first experience of the internet (if it could be called that back then) was in the early or mid 80s (long ago, hard to remember year) and my parents had spent a lot of money to get a computer and they proudly showed me how they could access some data (I think it was airline flight times) live on the computer (but was pre-windows so was just a bunch of data scrolling down the screen). I was not impressed, but I liked using their computer, they got me a 'Typing Tutor' program that taught me to touch-type, and it was convenient for writing school papers and their computer exposed me to learning to use a word processing program (WordStar I think, then sometime later they got WordPerfect I believe). But back then a person had to use tags to do bold typeface etc (similar to html tags later on), so it was a bit tedious.

Then although I used computers/programs at jobs I had, I don't think I experienced browsers and internet searches until sometime in the early 1990s. Eventually we all enjoyed being on the internet so much that our company sent us a memo that we were not allowed to use it at work (except for work purposes). So that was when I bought my own computer (mid-1990s I guess) I don't know if windows existed then or not. I probably had AOL. I thought we used the big soft floppy disks back then, but I kind of feel like I remember having to reload my computer with a whole lot of little small hard floppies after it got a virus.

I don't know if it was usenet or bulletin boards or what they were called, but my early computer time-wasting was done on horse forums. And there was one glorious weekend in the 90s when the American Quarter Horse Association allowed free access to search their horse genealogy database.

My computer skills are a mixed bag and keep going out-of-date. Now that I'm retired and no longer needing to keep up, I suppose I will become increasingly incompetent.
 
Our first was windows 98 on dial up, and after we realized we were going to use it more than we originally thought for a few dollars more a window would come up when the phone rang so we could hang up and take the call. We lived in a very small community (not a town), so the computer and the phone were pretty much our only company.

And now we pretty much live on the computer (Me) or tablet (DH).
 
Old Salt said:
I started using computers when there was no Windows and everything was done through the DOS Prompt: c:/
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Same for me. It was hard to give up some of the control with using DOS.

Our department at work was the first to get computers. My boss predicted there would be a day when they’d be on every desk. It didn’t seem possible based on the cost alone.
 
My husband brought over my (our) first computer. His intention was that I'd learn to help him make labels for the products he sold at his store. I found out about the internet and hit the "information super highway" with the pedal to the metal. :D Those labels didn't get made (at least not here) for a very long time. It still took me a little while to realize what all a computer is capable of. Then I found Eons, my first experience with social networking site (it was for Boomers). I was addicted but made some wonderful, lasting friendships there. One of them is our @feywon. Eons folded in 2012 leaving it's members feeling disenfranchised. Some of us eventually migrated to Facebook. I never thought I'd find what we had there again...but Senior Forum has filled the bill !

To answer your questions. I couldn't have dreamed 30 years ago that I'd be able to instantly connect with people all over the world anytime I want. I certainly never dreamed I could set up accounts and bank online, or be able to store my entire music collection in digital form. I didn't realize at first that I could watch T.V. and live news broadcasts on the computer. Now I consider myself fairly computer literate and continue to learn new things.
 

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