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Post by Hnefahogg on Mar 24, 2023 7:59:30 GMT
In these days when you can get a smartphone for 100 dollars or less and a SIM card for 10 bucks that hook you up to the Internet, people don't remember or are too young to know that there used to be a time when a computer cost so much that they put many, if not most, in debt. A lot of folks couldn't even afford their own computer and had to lease one through their jobs. Our first cost 3,500 dollars. Okay, there were less fancy ones for 1,000 (and computers were evolving at a rate where they were old the next year). The Internet was expensive, too; you were charged at an hourly rate instead of paying a monthly subscription. What could you do if you didn't have the money? You could for instance go to the library. But that wasn't a fitting option if you wanted to go on the NSFW websites. And the Internet was largely about that back then, to an even higher degree than today. Then Sega in 1999 released their Dreamcast console retailing for 199 dollars at launch coming bundled with a 56K modem. You could buy a disc with a web browser and a mouse and keyboard to get on the Internet. I own a console and just recently realised that I own an old dial-up modem. It doesn't make the classic dial-up sound, though. It turns out only the fancier ones did that.  |
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Post by Flying Monkeys on Mar 24, 2023 8:23:19 GMT
The screen got 11 words per line, huh?
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Post by yggdrasil on Mar 24, 2023 9:47:30 GMT
Got my first one about 1994/5, paid about £1300 and came with a dot matrix printer. Had about 16 meg of RAM if I remember right. Took about 20 minutes + to download a 3 minute song back then. The encyclopedia CD ROMS were brilliant for my kids school work though.
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Post by Flying Monkeys on Mar 24, 2023 10:01:46 GMT
Got my first one about 1994/5, paid about £1300 and came with a dot matrix printer. Had about 16 meg of RAM if I remember right. Took about 20 minutes + to download a 3 minute song back then. The encyclopedia CD ROMS were brilliant for my kids school work though. Song. Right. |
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Post by Hnefahogg on Mar 24, 2023 13:08:06 GMT
I might add that there were cheap computers available in the USA in the 90's. eMachines in 1998 sold computers for as low as 399 (without a monitor). Not sure if there was any equivalent in Europe and the UK, though.
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Deleted
Deleted Member
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2023 13:26:47 GMT
My first computer was an Apple Performa that cost £1,200 and had a whopping 120mb hard drive. 
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Post by ayatollah on Mar 24, 2023 21:01:53 GMT
I might add that there were cheap computers available in the USA in the 90's. eMachines in 1998 sold computers for as low as 399 (without a monitor). Not sure if there was any equivalent in Europe and the UK, though. My dad got me one in 98 and I think it was about that price. |
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Post by Pippen on Apr 4, 2023 4:16:29 GMT
Dial up Modems and DOS ![[hairraise]](http://storage.proboards.com/6870873/images/BNwjBofuU0mbfrsNOxJb.gif) |
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Post by klandersen on Apr 5, 2023 1:11:50 GMT
I remember in the very early days of the internet when AOL was just a newborn baby just about any internet service provider you used it was $20/month. At first you were limited with how much time you could spend online before you were timed-out, at least with AOL.
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Post by Catman on Apr 5, 2023 2:31:24 GMT
Catman remembers when the internet was just a bunch of tin cans and strings. They had to change to the current electronic version because goats kept eating the tin cans and cats kept running off with the strings.
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Post by Hnefahogg on Apr 5, 2023 17:06:37 GMT
I remember in the very early days of the internet when AOL was just a newborn baby just about any internet service provider you used it was $20/month. At first you were limited with how much time you could spend online before you were timed-out, at least with AOL. There was no such limit here but you paid per hour, whereas it was half the price in the evening. This led to some teenagers who spent a lot of time online giving their parents phone bills of hundreds of dollars. There came fixed subscriptions toward the end (with like 20, 50 or 70 hours per month, depending on how much you payed) when most people were switching to broadband (DSL/cable). |
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Post by Hnefahogg on Aug 26, 2023 16:48:16 GMT
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Post by mrellaguru on Aug 26, 2023 23:06:49 GMT
Hey I watched this same video earlier today. I was on the internet in the 90s but I don't remember this thing at all. Which makes sense because it was a huge failure. Still the fact that there was a computer with a pizza button is awesome and hilarious. You could tell the person who delivered your pizza that you used the pizza button.
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Post by mrellaguru on Aug 26, 2023 23:07:35 GMT
Web TV
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Post by Hnefahogg on Aug 27, 2023 10:23:52 GMT
Hey I watched this same video earlier today. I was on the internet in the 90s but I don't remember this thing at all. Which makes sense because it was a huge failure. Still the fact that there was a computer with a pizza button is awesome and hilarious. You could tell the person who delivered your pizza that you used the pizza button. There was something like this in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back (2001): |
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