I feel like remembering fond times from back in the 1990s. I had just moved from Alabama back to my Birth home in Western New York, I had found my first apartment, I just came into a nice chunk of money, so I was living it up a little. So I bought my first PC and you know what us I got a rent to Own from Rent A Center, A Packard bell Legend I believe, I see so many of those around these days at retro events, I almost think they where sold in Six packs.Testing it out installing the OS, playing with Packard bell navigator, the normal version and the simulated home version.Then After playing for a while with the Operating system the default games, Mine Sweeper,Solitaire, and one that had a cat and a mouse and cheese. After I got board playing with all those, I looked in the box, Now back in these days in the 1990s, computers would come with between 400 to 1100 dollars worth of free software heck even some of the peripherals did the same thing. Installing several full games, Limited memory though I think 16 MB, so when I finished one game I had to uninstall it and install another. Some of the games and software where complete full software, some was shareware, some was demoware, and a few where nothing but unplayable or videos of demos, but most of them where useful full working programs. What started me on this nostogia is I was looking through some aol file archives. And some onr found 4 of the games I helped program or did at work for, so now they are posted at the internet archive.
But then I started remembering, The first three months with my computer, Chain Smoking and a 3 liter of JOLT COLA, or a giant pot of tea, depended on my mood. Mind you there where some default icons on my computer, and the first one was GEnie, the second one was Prodigy, the third one was Compuserve, and the final one was called America Online. Each one came either with a demo a small video comercial or a slideshow. I tried all of them. back in those days DEBIT cards did not work as credit cards, and all of the services required a credit card except for america online which offered a bunch of alternatives. I happened to have one of those alternatives.
So like any good computer user who doesn't know what hes doing, I started to explore all the neat places on AOL, at first I wasnt that impressed, it just looked like a BBS with a GUI, it pretty much did the same things, just much pretier and higher resolution, however it did have full chatrooms. and full file folders, message boards, forums and so on.
I was one of those idiots who at first used ridiculosuly simple passwords. I was a Moron. I also fell for the trick that said I would get free hours if I pressed control alt delete or someting, which automaticly kicked me off line, and back in those days sometimes it was hard to get back on line.
Any one else miss those days, I dont hear that many stories about the others, I know they existed, I knew some of them from the other ISP. Plus the news made a big deal about it, I remember listening to the news, late at night telling myself I am only going to be on for another hour I do not want to run up my phone bill or aol bill, But everytime I attempted to leave someone new popped on I had to talk to expecially of the oppisite gender. Not to make you all feel old, But I been on the internet almost 25 years, Does that make anyone feel old? I started when I was 22 and now I am pushing into my mid 50s. EEKS