1998, AOL of course

For just browsing on the internet, it was all I needed. My big screen tv made for a great monitor!

It was such a great way to get familiar with the internet before moving on to a computer. I turned several members of my family and a lot of friends on to the internet with WebTV.

Got a WebTV as a gift from my parents in 1999. My first introduction to the internet until I had a custom PC built for me in 2003.

I was big into BBS's at the time. Even ran my own (self-written in Z80 assembly language) system for a few years. Fun stuff.

Got into Fidonet for a bit after that.

I sure as hell couldn't have foreseen back then the daily slog (deleting crap) that it's become now.

Was in High School during that time, so it makes the most sense it was then.

in the early 70's, I used a terminal and a 300 baud dial up modem (yes, you put the receiver into a box for a handshake), and we sent typed messages. The only printouts were on paper rolls, and input was paper tape or decks of cards. It was pretty awkward. We could read messages by printing them out. All caps (no desenders) and it was fun to create pictures out of printed characters.

The first CRT screens that I saw on computers that I owned were on an Osborne, an Apple II+, a Commodore 64, and a TRS 80.

On those computers, we could sometimes send what would be called email today. Again, we usually had to dial into a mainframe, and it was not typical to be sending messages back and forth regularly. No world wide web!

In fact, I thought is was amazing when we got Wordstar (a CPM based word processor), and Visacalc. Wow! Even then, we used electric typewriters to create most documents, and used the personal computer mostly as a terminal.

I think Appleworks really changed the game! Also, I was so intrigued by the first Mac, that I spend hours and hours playing with it.

At that point, by the early 80's, some of use were sending email regularly, but it was still usually a closed account on a specific mainframe where we had an account.

All the employees were given an email account, and most had no idea of what to do with it.

The default reply mode was "all". When the company started getting into financial problems in the early '90s, an email was sent out from management about how the water filter was being taken out of the employee lounge to save money. Upset employees sent out their first email replies, to "all". Other employees replied, saying "why did you send this to me? I don't care" which also went to "all". This snowballed and, of course, crashed servers everywhere. It was a great moment. The introduction to email.

DEC also had a massive intranet that went all over the world. I remember talking with someone in Australia in live time as we both listened to the live CNN broadcast from Baghdad as the US attacked with missles in the first Gulf War. It made me realize how small the world really was with modern technology.

and I got on to the Internet in '93 after DEC collapsed and took away my fix.

that seems like an awfully long time ago...

She was just blown away at the concept of it.

edit as you went along. It was a kind of pain.

I could get the housework done while the e-mails were downloading.

That was the year I put a modem in my computer and (don't judge) signed up for an AOL account. I think I sent my first email in the summer of that year. I also started attending a new college that year and received a school email account.

We had a VAX system at school. It was hideous.

I had to use a Unix based e-mail editor.
Just back spacing was an ordeal.

It was so exciting to dial in and see the "new mail" notification.

Type GO EASY and wait with breathless anticipation for it to appear.