Does anyone remember back in the middle nineties when AOL charged by the minute and people read their email offline to save money
3 Likes
Ah yes of course. We got out start via a product called Juno. Back then we used a DOS program I think, for email. Only connection to the world was a single dial up line. With that product you could read and write your mail and put it in out box. When ready, you selected Connect and it dialed up, retrieved your mail. took whatever you had sent, and hung up. They even provided an 800 number to use.
When Juno free dialup service ceased, we hadda get a [dial up] ISP. Only there was no way that I could figure with windoze to do the connecting the way Juno did. So I shrugged and told wife I guess we will have to use Linux. Free tools to sendmail and fetchmail. And the rest is history.
The world was a better place then.
I was a teen when internet was becoming of age. We got our first PC at about 13 years old. We would go to walmart and buy the AOL CDs with internet time. Even back then, there was no real credit card processing yet. The credit cards were still on the carbon paper with the slider machine. I was an early user of ebay in the late 90’s. Back then, you would bid and win. You would get a shipping quote from seller. You would then go get a money order and snail mail it to the seller. You would wait and wait some more. They would finally ship it. If you were lucky, you would get your item in 3 weeks. It was nothing like it is today. I remember in the early 2000’s when paypal was a thing (Thanks Elon) and it really sped up the ebay experience. When I was in college, I had a side hustle of parting out old motorcycles on ebay. I made good money on parts back then because very few people were doing it.
1 Like
I remember a monthly flat rate for Internet, but had to pay for the second phone line and either connect thru a local number or be charged for the minutes used. I also remember when cell phones billed by the minute and per text.
A buddy told me about ebay stock in the mid 90s, i had no idea what he was talking about and didnt buy any. But if i bought every stock a buddy talked about id surely be poor.
I remember Cyber Monday being the new shopping day because it was the day most people went back to work after Thanksgiving and had the internet available to use to make purchase. Back then people either didn’t have the internet at home or it was slow as molasses.
The reason for that shopping day went away very soon afterwards, and I don’t know why people still follow this.
I can’t remember the first time I bought something online, maybe something on eBay. I’ve been a Prime member (a very exclusive club) for at least 15 years, maybe longer. Now I buy something online (usually Amazon) a few times a month.
I bought from Amazon when all they sold was books.
@Bears54 - when I first went on AOL in the early nineties we paid a small monthly fee for the internet but it only covered a minuscule amount of data. After you used that amount they charged you by the minute. Then a few years later they started charging a flat rate per month
1 Like
I didn’t get online until 97 or 98, I think.
Who would have thought Amazon would become what it is today? It is pretty amazing you can open the app, search something, click buy and it shows up at your door in a day or two with free delivery. I ordered a part for my dishwasher a few weeks ago and it literally took 30 seconds to find the part on Amazon and click “buy now”".
I got into the internet in the late 90s and thought it was the coolest thing ever. Had AOL, and you could see when somebody had read your emails, plus do instant messaging and chat rooms.
1 Like
My grandpa was an early adopter of internet. He was an engineer and loved those old green screens and dot matrix printer.
I was reviewing a purchase on Amazon and was invited to be a part of “Amazon Vines” - I could get free items in return for providing a review of the items…good or bad. I signed up, but I’m not sure how much I will use it since if you get over $600 of merchandise Amazon will report it on a W9 and it will be considered income. But for small little bullshit items I figured why not. There are a lot of items but very very few that I’ve seen so far are worth requesting.
I think you meant a 1099. I have seen a couple of articles reporting that the IRS had said that 1099s are not required to be issued for less than $5,000 this year, except that the $600 limit would be enforced for 3rd party payment platforms like paypal or venmo (despite the law that says otherwise).
I had to complete a W9, but you are correct, it’s 1099. I’m not worried as I don’t plan on getting loads of crap from them, but apparently some have had thousands of dollars worth of merchandise given to them and they report over $600. I guess they treat you as an independent contractor and by specifying hobby, you avoid self employment tax. But there isn’t a way to search for a specfic type of item and I really don’t want to spend hours scrolling thru the stuff that they do have available. So far it’s a cheap way for me to get cat toys.
If we had any left, we’d send them, We gave away all of our cat toys when our last cat died. A ribbon and an empty box work pretty well. One of our last cats would get into the suitcase if we got one out to pack.
This is my first cat as an adult, and I live alone and feel sad for the cat since he is an indoor only cat, so I have several different Amazon boxes laying around for him to play in, so yeah, I get the box things. But he is in all of them an some point. I got a new canister vacuum yesterday and as assembling it and went into the kitchen. I come back and the cat is already investigating the Oreck box.
This topic was automatically closed 7 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.