OT: When did you first start using the interwebs?

I love this thread! Great memories, as I was scrolling through I was reminded of Windows 3.0 and how much better each new version of Windows was, talking my mom into buying a 20' telephone cable, calling my cousins computer through the phone line and getting them to connect, busy signals when trying to connect to AOL, a doubling of speed that was noticable... so many cool experiences that are forgotten!

I don't remember when I started using the internet. I remember 90-91 using windows and playing games all the time. Windows 95 was such a big deal. 

2005 in kindergarten

We had a computer before we had internet or even Windows. I remember using MS DOS to run games. Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego comes to mind.

Probably got internet in...1998? I'm gonna go with 1998. Had to sign out if my parents wanted to send a fax. We didn't get high speed until my first year at UM, so 2004.

MIT was a DARPA/ArpaNet hub, and my freshman year had Project Athena up and running for incoming freshman, so everyone got an account on the campus network, which was directly gatewayed into both the ArpaNet and NSFNet. It was actually pretty fast - dialup was so disappointing when I got it at home later. I didn't realize until later how much stuff I had access to via that setup - I used it for classes, USENET, and keeping myself on the top of the campus-wide Hextris (Hexagonal Tetris) and Trek73 leaderboards :) (For you younguns, DARPA=Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, ArpaNet was the network connecting the labs working with them, and NSFNet was the National Science Foundation network connecting the supercomputer labs to universities so people could time-share the super-expensive big iron for things like fluid dynamics calculations. Those networks were the proto-Internet and still form much of what used to be called the backbone.)

My Dad used to work for IBM. When he traveled to the Far East (Australia, Japan, China) he would bring home an IBM AT "portable" computer. It was the size of a suitcase. When laid flat on a table, the keyboard was hinged and swung down to expose the tiny screen and two (!!) floppy drives. The screen display was a bright plasma orange color. We used to send each other "email" thru IBM's internal network to communicate (more like IM than email), in real time, while he was on the other side of the world. I was taking Computer Science classes so I was the only one in my house that knew how to run the thing. As previously mentioned, when on the computer, the modem took over the phone line (no incoming calls from my sister's BF!). My Dad is now in his early 80s and quickly picks up on new technology. We text all of the time (not that it's really new). My Mom, on the other hand.........

November 1996, after we beat Ohio State.  I was amazed that you could jump from website link to website link to website link about the game.  

I was also confused as hell about how to get back where I started from.

(I actually used a character-based version of it in 1989 to discuss the possibility of Penn State joining the Big Ten.  I'm not sure what it was called at the time.)

Back in the days of AOL, 1998 I believe. Got high speed back in 2001 at CMU

First time I got on the internet was in 1997. I remember as the first thing I saw was an announcement about Princess Diana being killed. I'm glad Al Gore invented this wonderful series of tubes.