Dial Up Service

When I first got into high school I convinced my parents that we should get connected to the internet, and I was immediately enthralled with the net. Since they were on dial up service and we only had one phone line most of my online time was at night, so I’d stay up for hours emailing people and chatting with my friends. I discovered online chess and cards, chat rooms, and message boards. I was amazed at how much information was out there; I could plug whatever I wanted to learn about into a search engine and up would pop some information about my topic.

When I got to college I was introduced to the world of high-speed internet, and I was astounded to learn how much I had been missing out on by relying on dial up service. Suddenly I could download programs without leaving the computer online all night to download a game demo, and I could stream music and videos directly to my computer. When I was on dial up service I had known people shared music online but the knowledge didn’t do me any good since it took such an ungodly amount of time to download a single song, much less an entire album. High speed internet let me swap music as well as movies and documents back and forth with my friends around campus whenever I wanted and within minutes; no more getting up at 3am to make sure my download was still going.

Another great advantage high speed internet had over dial up service was that with my high speed connection I could be online all the time, letting me reply to emails and chat with friends whenever I wanted without waiting three or four or five minutes for my computer to get connected to the internet and for my email homepage to load. Though dial up service allowed me to access all of the basic, elemental components of the internet it didn’t make it very easy; I still remember bringing over a magazine so I could have something to read while the pages loaded on our dial up connection. Though the dial up service was a lot better than nothing, I don’t think I could ever go back now that I’ve tried high speed internet since it gives me so many more options and uses for the internet that I could never take advantage of while on dial up.