Haha, yeah, the 90s internet wasn't kind to epileptics :)

'98. 56K dialup at $2.50/hour.

I miss those days; chalk it up to rose tinted glasses if you will, but the internet seemed so much..simpler.

1998

1994/1995, I would go to a friends house to use his internet and I remember his dad was paying around 5 dollars an hour for it so it was used very sparingly.

Pretty much the same with cw8's response above... 1995.

I don't recall the exact year, I think it was the late 80s. We were using a 2400 baud modem at the time. We used GEnie at that point. Also used a bunch of the local BBS boards then as well. We did move to America Online a little afterwards, after trying out CompuServe and Prodigy. Most memorable though was AOL playing Neverwinter Nights online.

Probably 1994/5ish, but I didn't know at the time, on whatever those Blueberry Macs were running at the time on the school network. At home was around 1996, AOL then Juno. 56K either way.

I first used it in school in 1995. I first got home access with dial-up in December 1996.

Somewhere around 1995 using altavista at first.

~2006 with 56k dial-up, I think.

Upgraded to 256k "broadband" sometime soon after, then to 512k, followed by 1.5Mb/s, then 8Mb/s (only get ~5.7Mb/s due to line length / quality) a few years ago. It can't get (much) faster without improvements to infrastructure.

Recent political events here mean that we're not likely to get fibre to the home/premises any time soon...

First time I used the internet must have been around 1996-97 when my school first got it. My mother thought it was a fad and a rip-off at the time, so she didn't see any reason why we should have our own connection. It wasn't until 2004 when I finished university that I got my own connection. Started with 56K dial-up for the first year or so, then moved on to 1mbit broadband in 2005.

internet cafe back in 1999 and a slow internet connection,
so we just played games alot ^^

Early 90s I think. Long before graphical web browsers. Not from home, I think I was visiting an university with my big brother, and used gopher (= the text-based precursor of www, if you will) and a bit of usenet there on some terminal.

The first time at home... I think it was already before Windows 95 (which I think introduced internet to most people). I recall installing Winsocks or somesuch to Windows 3.1 so that I could use some kind of restricted internet access through my service provider, which before that was mainly offering access to Fidonet and its own internal discussion forums.

Yeah, so even before Usenet, there was BBS based Fidonet or something like that. The funny thing about it was that it seemed to take a week for messages to propagate from Finland to US, so if you participated to some international discussion forums, you would all the time be one week behind of the others discussing them.

I recall that was what amazed people with Usenet: you send a question to an international discussion forum, and someone might reply to it from the other side of the world in mere hours!

Naturally, with current web based forums, it can be even more instantaneous, like mere minutes or even seconds. :)

Probably 1993, though possibly earlier. I remember using the new Mosaic and reading newsgroups on usenet when I was at university. I don't remember if I encountered the internet before, but that's the earliest I remember using it seriously. I think I only had internet access at home since late 1996. I had a web presence since 1997 at least.

By the way, using Wayback Machine to look at my site, there's lots of nonsense there. Here's one piece from 1997:

Get Money and Friends (link leading to a page containing the following text)

For fans of Money and Friends comes this special once-in-a-lifetime offer. This offer is available for a limited time only, so get out your credit cards now, and phone 1-800-I-WANT-IT.

ET Comics is proud to present the first ever almost-life-sized Money and Friends dolls (well, almost almost-life-sized). Now you can reenact the adventures of ET Comics' most well known characters, Loretta Money and Dick Friends, at the comfort of your own home, or in the park, if you'd like. In fact, you can reenact them anywhere. And don't worry - no more than 10% of those seen playing Money and Friends have been arrested or put in mental institutions.

Made from high quality cardboard, the Money and Friends figures are a must have for any child or adult.

Read what Money and Friends users have to say:

"Ever since I got Money and Friends, I'm a completely new man,"
Ru Paul

"Loretta is a great bed partner, and I should know,"
Bill Clinton

Phone lines are open. Call now!

* Inflatable versions also available.

1996, 56k ISDN connection.

Only 1 hour a day because it was so expensive. Instead of waiting (months) on gaming magazines to post hints and walkthroughs i could now finally get them myself.
It's not actually all that long ago but alot has been changed since then.