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Remembering the Old Days of Dial-Up Internet

22/05/2013 posted in Office Talk

The other day a couple co-workers sent me a sound clip of dial-up internet when its connecting and it got me thinking about the old days *sigh* I miss the 90s but not dial-up!

I was born in 1994 so I don’t remember much about the internet except the fact that it was sloooooow, at age four the only thing I was doing was playing Diablo on a Windows 95 operating system however by the time I got into middle school I had already learned the ropes of how to navigate my way through the computer and internet so my parents being as nice as they were got me my own computer, little did I know that having it was not worth it. Back in the day (I like to make myself sound older than I really am) to access the World Wide Web you had to connect your phone line to the computer and then go through a dreadfully long process of connecting, the process however was much more complicated than it is today.

Whenever using dial-up you had to go through these scenarios:

1. You had to make sure everyone in the house knew you were going online, so that they would not pick up the phone, thus signing you off the Internet.

2. You have to wait for the connection to start up resulting in that long painful sound of:

ooooooooooooooooeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz shhhhhhhhhhhh*static*hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dong… dong… kaaaaaaaaaaa zhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sound. Sometimes, it took three or four tries to get online.

3. You then had shouting matches with your siblings or parents about Internet hogging.

4. And whenever you were downloading something very important, the Internet would kick out.

Downloading on dial-up, forget it, huge waste of time. I have a fond memory of when I tried to download a song by shaggy (don’t judge) that I desperately wanted and the download would only take approximately 2 hours, yes only two...I did everything to keep people from picking up the phone in worry that it might ruin the download, nevertheless someone managed to interrupt the download half way in - still I wanted to continue, only to realize that it wouldn’t be done until the next day!

Thinking back on all this I’m glad that I got to live through the uprising of technology and I miss the old days when I would try to sneak onto the computer at night and hope that my parents wouldn’t be woken up by the dial-up connecting. There is nothing like that fear of hearing your parent’s footsteps coming down the hall only to find you trying to connect to the internet at three in the morning.

When I remember dial-up it does not bring back god awful memories however it leaves me giggling because look at us now, we are thriving. I am personally glad to say that I survived those days of slow internet, it makes me appreciate how fast, and effectively we can connect to the internet and with people in 2013.

When I heard that sound of the dial-up connection it made me realize that only a few years ago my life never revolved around internet but now it does and that’s in a good way because without internet I definitely would not have my job and now we can socialize, learn, get news updates, listen to music and create things all within a heartbeat.

Want to re-create old memories? listen to the same sound clip that brought back all of mine: http://www.dialupsound.com/

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