Yes, we really did have to download things uphill both ways back then. I remember leaving the computer on overnight to download a game that was, like, 40 mb.

In the morning I got there and it had crashed at like 98% lol

My dad was pissed at me for "wasting electricity" the real OG data center hater over here.

And then it would finally connect, and your sibling would pick up the phone and start dialling....

Aaaaaaargh!

I remember way, way back in the days of dialup a very tech savvy friend had emailed me 20+ files, because I was the only one capable of stitching an image together. Took forever (days?) to download the files, and I had to redownload more than once due to roommates doing fun stuff like picking up the other phone line... (It was of his truck after hitting a moose.) Of course, I didn't get to see the image until he got home, I had a Hercules monitor, he had a fancy one that did actual graphics.

I believe broadband is, generally, a net negative for the human species.

Its always on, leading to a constant conveyor belt of fresh horrors.

Its always on, so theres no seperation from internet and anything else, because you can't just log out of the internet anymore.

High speed/Always on internet means goods we used to own physically and use as we please, have been converted into goods we just perpetually rent and can be taken from us at any time.

always on broadband was genuinely the turning point in ruining the internet.

I remember images loading one line at a time and I get irritated at less than 40Mbps.

I'm from the before-times, where loading a single EGA screen in 4 colours took a good twenty seconds from a floppy drive. Printer was dot matrix. Internet was something mythical only possessed by the extremely elite or academia. You better believe I'm still astonished when I see a 4K game load in 3 seconds from an NVMe drive.

There was a time when you either had phone service or internet. But not both at the same time.

Limitations of available technology at the time =/= limitations generally caused by shitty ISPs and/or IT teams not maintaining their infrastructure and equipment properly.

We were also loading 30kb webpages. Try to load anything from the last 10 years over 33,600

I remember this and I complain about wifi. Americans are getting scammed on internet speed.

Mrrrrrrr meep meep meep meep meep meep meep meep. Murrrrrrrrrr weeeerrrrr MWOM MWOM mreeeeee meomrmrmrmrmmmmrrrr

(8 digit number because Europe)

I can still hear that image.

Christ, that sound lives rent free in my head

You know what’s worse that no internet? Slow internet.

Back when your computer picked up the phone and called some machine far away.

Dialing attempt 4 of 5

“Guess I’ll check my email tomorrow…”

My kid actually complained that the internet is slow when he was getting 24 MB/s on a Steam download.

When I was his age I got 300 bytes/s.

Twenty minutes to download a 1MB image.

Yes, really. 9600 baud modem.

ASCII art was popular then, and before: https://www.asciiart.eu/

In the UK we had free numbers that would cut out after an hour of use and you had to redial, so you had to do downloads or uploads is chunks

I loved the original NetZero. You could use the ISP phone number and set up a manual connection with Windows dialer... viola! Free dial-up with no ads or shitty dialer software!

Unfortunately I DO know this image...

I recognise that isn't MS Sans Serif, that text is also anti-aliased and has kerning.

Dialup noises still give me tingles. Like I'm about to experience something fun, new, and crazy soon.

Gatekeeping is a downvote

Trumpet Winsock.

ATDT5551234

So you can't complain about Wifi speeds unless you're prehistoric?

Sorry but the image has no effect on me due to a lack of grating/screaming machine noises.

I don't complain, my country's internet is like one of the fastest in the world.

I had to deal with this shit until 2007. Then we got a shitty WISP the was marginally better.

I remember waiting half a day for a youtube video to load, then leaving the computer on until the evening so I could show it to my brother when he got home.

Never had that because it was too expensive to be worth the trouble.