2 ms·

Very interesting article, didn't even know this existed. My first "proper" computer that my parents bought was running Windows 98, so will have missed this, bu

Very interesting article, didn't even know this existed. My first "proper" computer that my parents bought was running Windows 98, so will have missed this, but I remember using Windows 95 at school. We also missed the whole walled garden thing (I'm from the UK, I think AOL tried to break into the market here but not sure if it succeeded) and made our first forays onto the internet using dialup via an ISP. Interesting to see what a few years before my first time on the web was like. The "everything is an object" thing sort of reminds me of Plan9 with a bit of BeOS too.

DaiPlusPlus 8y ago
I'm from the UK too: we had a Dell XPS Dimension back in 1996, it came with the OSR-1 release which still had the original shell-based MSN client, so we signed up for the free 30-day trial included in the box so we could get on the Internet as well as to check-out the MSN stuff. I have memories of clicking around the original Explorer-shell based Internet Gaming Zone (zone.com would launch later) - then the free trial expired and we switched to CompuServ and Netscape. Only AOL was able to eke out a market in the UK - often the exclusive content they had was too American-centric to be of interest to Europeans, though I remember CompuServ was popular in academia. When we were in CompuServ we only used it to get on the Internet - so after subscription-free ISPs like FreeServe and LibertySurf were launched we instantly ditched CompuServe.