Reported: AOL finally shuts down its dial-up service

[catsmate]

I remember spotting that a friend had an ISDN line installed. In their own home! 64 kilobits per second, up and down! Imagine the inconceivable glamour of that! (I recognised the network terminal from using them at work.) He was something in banking and his employer had paid for it.

I have a TA around somewhere, a 2B+D model I picked up on a project in '99.

I had been hanging out in local BBSs around 1991-1992, and everybody was buzzing about the internet. IIRC I signed up for the free trial, decided I was interested, but after some more research I decided to go with a "real" internet provider, because I wanted access to the other parts of the net than the web, like IRC and Usenet. Was on dial-up until about 2000 and I can still remember the day I upgraded to a 28.8 baud modem from the old 14.4 baud. Why, I could download a 400 kb file in only a few minutes!

I got a 512kb link in '98.......

 

[MarkCorrigan]

I think this thread needs to be renamed to "Old people remember the internet"

 

[newyorkguy]

Bumping this thread. Just got an email from a friend alerting me they had changed their email address. Now they're using Gmail because their previous, long-time email address has stopped working and they can't figure out why. That was an AOL address.

I still have and occasionally use my old AOL address. Why? I have a couple friends who still use it when they email me. One is someone from the accounting office on my job. Starting about fifteen years ago I asked them to switch over to my Gmail address but they have always ignored that request (???) and continue to email me on AOL. The ones from accounting I really need to see, too.

 

[Skeptical Greg]

My AOL mail is working fine, but something I don't use much...

 

[alfaniner]

According to Google AI:


On my job, right after Win95 came out, the HR was giving out free AOL 3.0 discs. That's how I got started. A big problem was, "Honey, can you turn off your dial-up, please. I have to call my sister." Eventually we switched to a fiber optical provider for bundled phone/TV/internet.

View attachment 62983

I know I have at least a few of those exact ones in a stack somewhere. For some reason they decided to try to emulate a Tide detergent box.
A couple years back I looked at eBay and was surprised to see that AOL discs were being offered at a few dollars apiece. There are still some. I expect the bid price will go up soon.