As a late teenager, my family had a
VIC-20 and a Commodore 64 computer. My first computer was a used 386
that was inherited from my mother. This was a big bulky machine that
covered an entire desk. I had zero interest in the computer, looked
at it as one more thing that took up space and really didn't want it.
Then my husband picked up a floppy disk
from the store and showed me how to work a 14.4 K-baud modem. It's
hum and beeping soon became music to my ears. My Geocities account
was opened a few months later. We had basic editing software but
the page was was pretty much written by hand. (This was before the
days of mytechcoupons.com
where you couldn't go out and just buy webpage design software.)
In fact, the first web design program
that I remember came with Netscape and then Front Page. The Netscape
Navigator came bundled with software from another company. Although
simple, the program made it a breeze to create a website.
Buying a computer today is much more
challenging. Coupon sites like www.mytechcoupons.com
can help you get a good price. You can shop through stores like Best
Buy and compare specs on products like HP, Sony, Logitech and others.
This is another change from the earlier
days of the internet. There really wasn't much in the way of online
stores in 1996. Purchasing electronics meant hitting the local retail
store and hoping that the sales representative had more knowledge
that you did. It wasn't always the best bet but it was what we had to
work with.
I sometimes miss the earlier, simpler
times of the internet. One thing that I don't miss is the 14.4 K-baud
modem. It just wouldn't work with my smart phone.