Internet from my time
It might feel ominous coming from the mouth of a twenty-three year old guy. Yeah, Internet is been from before me and will be after I'm gone. But I'm not concerned about that. It's a part of my life - an inevitable part considering I'm a Software guy.
I want to talk about speed of Internet - here in India. My first experience of Internet was when I was 12Yrs old - about 11years ago. I was a village kid and a proper village kid without a touch of tech. I visited one of my uncles in Mumbai that May - the school vacation. They had a computer, perhaps a Pentium III or sum such. But he needed Internet for work. So my cousins were casual with it. I on the other side didn't knew 'C' of Computers. I just watched on while my cousins interacted with weird looking wired accessories connected to a Big Box set Vertically and twice the size of a VCR.
I knew VCR - we used to bring Video Cassettes from Kankavli to watch movies once in a while. There was a guy couple of wadi's (blocks) away who had a Color TV and a VCR. Usually I would ride with my Papa on our Bajaj M-80 to deliver summons. At night he would deliver the TV and VCR for the night.
Well, sweet childhood!
But after this, I didn't see Internet for quite a while. I seriously hooked up to the Drug that Internet (Or rather Just NET) is, when I left home at 16 for studies and came to Mumbai. All through my Junior College Years (Just two years - 11th and 12th really) I moved up the ladder on knowledge scale. I used to go through at least 10-12 Magazines a month courtesy my college's Library. And just then my cousin brought a PC - a Pentium4 1.8GHz with 128MB of RAM 40GB HDD 15 Inches CRT. I experimented a lot on that. And I also learned how to undo things so that people don't get scared off knowing I'm playing with intestines of the PC.
We didn't have Internet then. What interaction I had with net was in Cybercafe's. I created my Yahoo!! mail account then. But still Net was slight removed from my life.
Things changed when I brought my first Mobile phone. It was a cute little piece - quite cheap without much fun in it. But I had selected the cheapest handset that had GPRS. I activated
99/- unlimited gprs plan and the net invaded my life. Sure it had only WAP but there was much more of that too.
For One year I rode the ICE - so as to say. And then I moved on to broadband.
It was 128kbps 1GB Limited download for500/-. Then it became 256kbps limited. And these days you can get 256kbps unlimited for the same amount. Soon it'll get to 512kbps unlimited Download.
I thankfully don't have much experience of Dial-up. From what little I experienced of dial-up it was the ass-end of nowhere. Slow speeds. Frequent disconnects. And pretty useless if you wanted anything that crossed few KB's.
Life has come a long way as I sit here and type this with a 1Mbps link behind me, and I can look back and still cherish the WAP experience I had then.
I want to talk about speed of Internet - here in India. My first experience of Internet was when I was 12Yrs old - about 11years ago. I was a village kid and a proper village kid without a touch of tech. I visited one of my uncles in Mumbai that May - the school vacation. They had a computer, perhaps a Pentium III or sum such. But he needed Internet for work. So my cousins were casual with it. I on the other side didn't knew 'C' of Computers. I just watched on while my cousins interacted with weird looking wired accessories connected to a Big Box set Vertically and twice the size of a VCR.
I knew VCR - we used to bring Video Cassettes from Kankavli to watch movies once in a while. There was a guy couple of wadi's (blocks) away who had a Color TV and a VCR. Usually I would ride with my Papa on our Bajaj M-80 to deliver summons. At night he would deliver the TV and VCR for the night.
Well, sweet childhood!
But after this, I didn't see Internet for quite a while. I seriously hooked up to the Drug that Internet (Or rather Just NET) is, when I left home at 16 for studies and came to Mumbai. All through my Junior College Years (Just two years - 11th and 12th really) I moved up the ladder on knowledge scale. I used to go through at least 10-12 Magazines a month courtesy my college's Library. And just then my cousin brought a PC - a Pentium4 1.8GHz with 128MB of RAM 40GB HDD 15 Inches CRT. I experimented a lot on that. And I also learned how to undo things so that people don't get scared off knowing I'm playing with intestines of the PC.
We didn't have Internet then. What interaction I had with net was in Cybercafe's. I created my Yahoo!! mail account then. But still Net was slight removed from my life.
Things changed when I brought my first Mobile phone. It was a cute little piece - quite cheap without much fun in it. But I had selected the cheapest handset that had GPRS. I activated
99/- unlimited gprs plan and the net invaded my life. Sure it had only WAP but there was much more of that too.For One year I rode the ICE - so as to say. And then I moved on to broadband.
It was 128kbps 1GB Limited download for
500/-. Then it became 256kbps limited. And these days you can get 256kbps unlimited for the same amount. Soon it'll get to 512kbps unlimited Download. I thankfully don't have much experience of Dial-up. From what little I experienced of dial-up it was the ass-end of nowhere. Slow speeds. Frequent disconnects. And pretty useless if you wanted anything that crossed few KB's.
Life has come a long way as I sit here and type this with a 1Mbps link behind me, and I can look back and still cherish the WAP experience I had then.
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