I was briefly on AOL. I used 'kruegz' as my ID, like I did on The Well before. I still use kruegz on some places today. (It's the first five letters of my last name, plus a 'z'--a friend's nickname for me.)

I was also on Compuserve back in '94. I thought it was cool how you could send faxes and snail-mail from Compuserve.

I remember trying to find internet access back in '93 or so while living in Minneapolis. The only thing I could find required you to be a University of Minnesota student or alumnus. So my roommate could get the internet, but not me. But there were some text-based BBSs that could give me text-based access to the internet, so that was fun.

I wasn't ever on AOL (or CServe either) - I eventually picked up a couple of IDs to use AIM after they opened it up to other people, but I never had the actual dial-in, mail, chatroom, AOL-content kind of account with them. Like -t, I went .edu -> local ISP.

We used Prodigy back in the mammoth online service days. Then switched to a normal ISP.

I tried Prodigy too, because I've always been compulsive. Also, Juno. I sign up for just about anything that catches my cursor. But they were never primary. Only AOL was. A local ISP wouldn't work because I worked in a different area code from where I lived, and I totally had to sneak on-line with the only personal modem at the office.

Yeah, I have memories from high school of rationing my monthly hours on prodigy so I could get on chat boards...

I was never on AOL. I hated AOL before hating AOL was cool.

I think Juno was my first or second. Never did AOL or Compuserve. I was late to the party and didn't have a computer until the lollipop iMacs, mine was green.

Prodigy was my first ISP, and I never had an AOL handle until I needed one for AIM. I wish I could remember my Prodigy ID, but it's gone.

I was on Compuserve and ended up on aol because of gaming. I was fatoudust there because everybody on the internet was supposed to be geeky and get fractal math references. I had multiple accounts and kept a notebook with lists of online minutes, somewhat because of chat, but mostly text based rpgs. It's kinda funny to me in a way that we're back to metered data usage. We may look back on the years we're closing out now as the halcyon days of unlimited data.

When I went to NWMSU in 90-94, there was a while big deal about it being the first "electronic campus" so I started out with my student email, then I had Jan-May without email at my folks house (NBD -- I used a LAND LINE (gasp) to call people on their LAND LINES when I wanted to chat, and used my dad's Earthlink if I needed to surf) and then I started grad school in 95.