Consumer Electronics How did we ever survive with dial up internet?

[BACCS]

I have been stuck on dial up for the past 2 days because our broadband ran out for the month, and I tried going to a webpage, but eventually gave up as it was so slow. It got me thinking, how on earth did we get by with such slow internet service?

 

[HarryTiger]

Web pages were built with the low bandwidth in mind so it wouldn't have been as bad as you experience now.

Text alone doesn't need much - 1 byte per character, less when compressed.

 

[Illinois Nazi]

Back in my day we didn't have this new-fangled internet. If you wanted to know something you looked in an encyclopedia, if you wanted to contact someone you looked in the phone book and if you wanted to play games you went to Timezone and paid 20 cents a go on Moon Patrol.

But I do remember the excitement of going from a 28K to a 56K modem.

 

[Oscarman]

Dial-up was before Channel BT so I guess it wasn't really a problem, plus most web pages were made for slow speeds. Did anyone ever download music etc on dial-up? I don't think I ever did.

I used to get so frustrated at being shaped onto dial-up speeds I would hook up the iPhone to the PC just to go at something near normal speed. On a 100GB plan now so no chance of shaping anymore.

 

[BACCS]

Dial-up was before Channel BT so I guess it wasn't really a problem, plus most web pages were made for slow speeds. Did anyone ever download music etc on dial-up? I don't think I ever did.

I used to get so frustrated at being shaped onto dial-up speeds I would hook up the iPhone to the PC just to go at something near normal speed. On a 100GB plan now so no chance of shaping anymore.

Haha, yep. It was lucky if the song downloaded within 10 minutes!

 

[WheatsWorshipper]

Did anyone ever download music etc on dial-up? I don't think I ever did.

Wasn't that back in the good old Napster days?

 

[John Dorian]

I downloaded 1 song back in my dial up days.

Took me 3 1/2 hours.

I was one of the last of my friends to make the switch to broadband.
I could never go back.

 

[Cleavy]

I remember the first mp3 I downloaded (I think from a Geocities site), they had a whole bunch of songs as featured on the Triple J Net 50. Took ages to download and had to use a download manager as it kept dropping out.

 

[hamG]

Web surfing is a little hilarious on dial up now days. Pretty much half the sites just won't load.

I am concerned at the amount of HLDM and TFC I played on dial up, and then playing CS when broadband finally became feasible and jumping to telstra cable. My god, those LPB bastards. All those years.

 

[ubolt]

they were the days

remember the old dialing noise it made when connecting?

such an awesome sound. i miss that.

 

[Beth]

Gather round young ones, I didn't get internet until my last year of uni, I took 8 hours to dial in just to download netscape, and I only knew how to do that because I bought a 100 odd page book with instructions.

Once on, well there was absolutely bugger all to look at. Benefit of studying back then of course was you could freely copy large slabs of work out of text books and lecturers and tutors were none the wiser!

Ah the good old days

 

[awesome wells]

I downloaded 1 song back in my dial up days.

Took me 3 1/2 hours.

I was one of the last of my friends to make the switch to broadband.
I could never go back.

oh man, i was stoked to reach 10 kb/s!

they were the days

remember the old dialing noise it made when connecting?

such an awesome sound. i miss that.

[YOUTUBE]gsNaR6FRuO0[/YOUTUBE]

Lol.

 

[Mr Meeseeks]

Gather round young ones, I didn't get internet until my last year of uni, I took 8 hours to dial in just to download netscape, and I only knew how to do that because I bought a 100 odd page book with instructions.

Once on, well there was absolutely bugger all to look at. Benefit of studying back then of course was you could freely copy large slabs of work out of text books and lecturers and tutors were none the wiser!

Ah the good old days

Haha

My first year at uni was in 2000. Just as Napster was starting to have its renaissance and the internet was just starting to come of age.

I can remember thinking the Uni speeds were mind-blowing! A song would only take half an hour!

I fondly remember using dial-up to play this awesome new game called Age of Empires for 30c over the phone line in about 1997. Good times

I cant imagine what it would be like at school now. Essays involved using Encarta or library books and 'changing it into your own words'. Only a couple of uber-rich girls had mobile phones. Netscape Navigator.

Kids have it fantasic these days

 

[Smoooothy]

Wasn't that back in the good old Napster days?

ahh napster, there still hasn't been anything as good around as that

 

[caMoGFC]

haha that sound brings back so many memories.

napster was the bomb...easily the best of the lot.


anyone used to use mirc? lmao

 

[The Passenger]

my best mate's old man still uses dial up internet. it's the funniest thing i've ever seen. the best part is he works for telstra so would get discount rates on his products but still sticks with his $10 a month dial up plan or whatever it is.

 

[The Passenger]

anyone used to use mirc? lmao

a/s/l??

 

[caMoGFC]

a/s/l??

18 m melb (i'm really 12)

got any n00dz blondebabe69?

 

[BACCS]

my best mate's old man still uses dial up internet. it's the funniest thing i've ever seen. the best part is he works for telstra so would get discount rates on his products but still sticks with his $10 a month dial up plan or whatever it is.

LOL, why doesn't he upgrade?

 

[Macca19]

ahh napster, there still hasn't been anything as good around as that

Nah. AudioGalaxy was better than Napster.

 

[Macca19]

I was on dial up until 2008 when I moved house. Couldnt get broadband in my old house (which was in the middle of the Western Suburbs of Adelaide) which was a constant cause of frustration.

 

[hamG]

If you weren't using IRC in the 90's you weren't using the internet properly.

My record for an ISP was Compuserve, it was $16.50 per hour on 28.8

The 2nd greatest internet moment of my life was when telstra introduced the big150 plan. 150 hours of dial up per month at an affordable price.

 

[The Passenger]

i remember when we first got dial up and i wanted to get score updates from west coast games which weren't live on tv (this was well before fox sports), but didn't want to use 3 hours of the 15 hour allowance for the month for the games.

so i would disconnect and reconnect every 2 or 3 minutes and only use like 15 seconds of internet just to get the score update. but i didn't realise every time i reconnected it was costing my folks a phone call. dad wasn't happy when the phone ball came in and there was about 300 calls to the dial up server

 

[krisholio14]

haha that sound brings back so many memories.

napster was the bomb...easily the best of the lot.


anyone used to use mirc? lmao

AudioGalaxy was the best bar none.

I was trying to use my mums lappy with dial up while I was staying there last night and gave up after 1/2 an hour of trying to get onto my facebook profile.

 

[adelaide_40]

Nah. AudioGalaxy was better than Napster.

Agree. Audiogalaxy in it's prime was fantastic.

We got off dial up finally in 08 and went on a adsl2 plan. Suddenly instead of taking 7 hours to download 10 songs it was 100 in half an hour.