Was a cool time, no one really knew anything about the internet then and it felt like this awesome "secret world" that connected you to the rest of the world!
Like, encyclopedias came on CDs (sometimes a pack of CDs lol. I remember having colliers in a 4-disc set). Games had great single player modes and local lan options - and didn't require an internet connection to play. There were lots of simple little toy programs and games, too. None of it required internet connections.
In a way that permanence was nice. If you pull out a 90s computer and load it up with 90s games, you still get the exact same experience you did back then. I think that's part of the appeal of people collecting vintage computers - I even seen teenagers enjoying that these days lol.
But yea, connecting to the internet felt a little like a ritual and the content felt like it had so much more flavor.
Like, people writing silly things on a geocities/angelfire/members.aol site, joining a webring, creating pages with tacky backgrounds and flashing gif accents. It was more fun to find out what funny fantasy world AquaHorse1998 was writing about on their angelfire site, than to see boring pictures of a dog on Facebook that Jenny from Ohio posted. (And it's the same person lol)
I really miss that feeling, it's a rarity nowadays.
The internet now is better by just about every metric. Its just not the internet of our teenage years, so like geezers in perpetuity back to the beginning of time we Luke things better how they were when we were teenagers, even if reality doesn't agree with those fond memories.
The guy then told me that he payed $800 for a 2400 baud modem.....
The very first modem I ever owned had a max speed of 300 baud. It was one of those Bell modems with the rubber cups you inserted the handset of the phone into.
Yes, I'm old.