It did not seem that long ago that I had Plain Old Telephone Service and a 56k modem. I remember when it took minutes to download megabytes of data. That was when you were lucky and it went through. Other times there was a problem and you had to start the process again. Now we have pages that load fast. The old days photos would take maybe 10s of seconds to display. What takes a minute today would have taken hours before.
Does anyone else have fond memories of the pee-pee-po that the old modems made as they connected to that other computer?
My march through the connections went from POTS to ADSL,and now FTTH. I am still amazed at WiFi that allows me to wirelessly connect to the Internet by phone or tablet.
My home phone went from POTS to VOIP (the dial tone is generated at the modem) when I switched to AT&T’s U-verse service. This means when the power goes out I lose the phone. With POTS the battery line voltage had generator backup at the Central Office which meant you had phone service during the outage.
I think it is good to keep a land line.
Heck , I remember pulling out an acoustic coupler from my travel bag to connect the laptop for email between flights and send faxes I had composed on the prior flight. Try balancing all that at an airport payphone.
My other fond memory was in a pre world wide web chat room just after Darpanet went private and getting hell from guys complaining that us “Corporate Guys” were hogging the place with our 300 baud modems. I remember explaining the power of the dark side to them.
I remember our first office computer was an Apple 2. No letters afterward. Our first “large” hard drive was an Apple thing that was as big as a shoebox, cost $1500 – and had 10K storage!
Things are lots better. I now have this desktop that is a gaming computer. Is it fast. And I can play WOT Blitz nicely on it.
I remember 56k modems and slower ones too, but not so fondly. My first home modem was 14.4k attached to Apple Mac Plus. It seemed great at the time, while simultaneously being very frustrating sometimes. One of the first interesting things I did with it was to download pictures of the comet impact onto Jupiter taken by the Hubble and the Keck telescopes.
I went through Q-Link for the Commodore 64 followed by Prodigy for an IBM PS2. Graphics were rendered through vectors and with a 28.8 modem you’d be mesmerized watching them build.
I also remember the first video files I saw online with a RealPlayer. It was the size of a postage stamp and rendered at 10-15 fps. Everyone in the television business decided right then and there that video on the web would NEVER be a threat to broadcasting.
I think my first fax/modem card was 14.4k.
EJ, I remember those postage stamp videos of poor quality. It was mesmerizing for me to see the pictures slowly form. I sure didn’t see gigabyte memory cards and portable computing in your pocket. I am still trying to figure out where I put the 8-track in my iPhone. If I just force the lightning connector just right it should work.
I knew aged geeks would gather around an electronic cracker barrel and talk about the old days. All we need is Jolt Cola with Ben Gay scent while remembering CompuServe flame wars.
It’s good to know I made it alive to be one.
My first connection with the Internet was on NiftyServe. I think it was connected to Fujitsu and had a connection to CompuServe. It was the days of the portals and text was king. The WWW was still a ways away.
I remember the first time I used a modem – back in the early 1980s (maybe 1983). It ran at a blazing 300 baud. And when we upgraded to 1200 baud modems the next year we felt blessed. Four times faster! Whoot!
Seawriter
I think the one we used at a store to update a computer was about 300 bauds.
Who would have believed growing up that you would have the ability to have a television-phone ala Dick Tracy and fit it into a shirt pocket.
Chester Gould?
Seawriter
I had to look up the name. Chester Gould was the person who drew Dick Tracy for the funny papers. Too bad he died in 1985 before the cell phone revolution took off.
Ya gotta admit, he came up with the idea. He got the part about having it your pocket wrong, though. His cell phones were worn on the wrist, like that watch no one carries any more.
That is a shame in some ways. If we wore our cell phones on our wrists there would be a lot less butt-dialing.
Seawriter
Apple Watch?