That is why those of us that could do it, would bring our ZIP drives to the university labs and plug them into the parallel port. :)

23 minutes to download Usher - Yeah and Outkast - Hey Ya!.mp3 - those were the days.

For a brief moment of my life, I got up as soon as my alarm went off. It was always exciting to see what MP3s were downloaded overnight from the queue.

Somehow it was more fun and you felt like you had accomplished something when you had a complete album. Things are too easy today :)

You mean USHERY~1.MP3?

:)

I was more a fan of Spin Doctors - Pretty Baby and Tony Hawks Pro Skater - Superman, personally

Dialup? Lucky. I had 14.4k through my dad's Startac until I was about 15.

That's still Dial-up.

56k was just the last version of Dial-up. I started on 9600baud (9.6k) and it started well before that even, at something like 0.1k.

In my experience almost anyone referring to dialup is talking about 56.6k, or at the very least some sort of modem connected to the PTSN, screeching noises and all. Is your experience different?

You had the internet through a mobile phone and you're calling dial up lucky? Mobile phones were legit space age back then.

Too many, I'm afraid. But do you remember the first time you had broadband and the time needed to download an mp3 was so short that you can't queue up the next download.

Had a aimilar experience recently after getting a fiber line installed and grabbing a game off Steam. Would have taken me hours on the old DSL, never mind a 33.6 dial-up.

I think my aging LAN gear capped out way before the fiber did, and an upgrade is on my todo list. ;)

I moved dorms almost entirely for this reason when I was in College. The new dorms were being built with a broadband Internet connection straight into the College network.

It was leecher heaven!

That is until some wiseass thought it'd be a good idea to run a private ftp site for a piracy group from their dorm room. The damn thing saturated the entire network until they got caught.

I didn't have internet in my dorm, so I was downloading mp3s at university and retrieving them at home by floppy disk. That is, 128kbps mp3s, which is about 1MB per minute (iirc), on 1.44MB floppy disks. split(1) to the rescue. I did the same for (short) videos too. Crazy days.

I think i pissed off some kids in the neighborhood when i started doing CDRs for the cost of the disc (or bring your own and i'll fill it up), when they had been selling them at a 100% (or more) markup...

I still remember zipping/splitting files to fit on floppies. I permanently have the number 1457664 (size of a 1.44MB 3.5") in my head.

For me the phone bill was even bigger issuer than slow download speed. Our local telephone company charged more than $1 per hour for all calls. I remember my parents being furious after seeing the bills.

that mp3 will be ready in 5 minutes. woohoo!