In early 95 my father bought a computer (p100, originally 8mb, later upgraded to 16mb, 1.2gb hd). Then in autumn, we bought an 28.8kpbs modem, and signed up to compuserve. I remember the costs... 19.95$ per month, 2 free hours, and I think 1.95$ for every next hour. And I'm in switzerland, so dollar prices are something rather unusual - every month you were billed for a different amount, because you never knew what the dollar exchange rate would be. oh, and long distance call to the next PoP of compuserve was of course not included in this whole thing - this added another 3-4$ or so per hour. and compuserve only had 14.4kbps modems at their end.
then the speeds got faster and faster - we switched to a provider which provided 28.8kbps, and 98 or so we bought a new computer with a 56kbps modem. some time later, internet over tv cable came, first with 256, then 300, 500, 1000, 2000, and now 5000kbps.
And my first web browser was NCSA Mosaic. And there were NO ADS back then. Hard to believe.
