In a Net-shell

[097] ... [Technology]

Saw something on teddit.net (reflected of course from Reddit), don't recall the exact heading, but ran like "Things Only Internet veteran can remember". Though not a veteran in the true sense (having started with Win98 when XP was already launched) to have been through since the early days of BBS, ARPAnet and such that we have only heard about, did come across the many things others have mentioned, both in hard and software front.

Floppy of course, rather Floppies since they came in two sizes: the 5.25inch with I think holding 1.2MB and the later 3.5inch giving you 1.44MB, used to both boot when needed and copy stuff between computers through MS Briefcase that synced them smooth. There were some DOS based software that enabled extending storage to 1.6MB. CD was a novelty holding close to 650MB. Anyway I never used ZIP Drive the 100MB predecessor and the later BlueRay discs. DVD was considered expensive. My first USB Flashdrive costed close to $30 by today's terms and came in a blister pack along with the mini CD to install drivers, a USB cable and an instruction leaflet. That it could hold 256MB was a blessing in disguise to do away with multiple floppies. The little thing still works despite taking much beating, and the cable is still handy. It also allowed creating a secret partition of required size within to hide anything personal through the built-in software to both create and launch using a password.

Hotmail gave you 2MB of storage and a mail from the provider came in promptly when the quota was getting filled, to delete unwanted or archive in Outlook Express, which anyway I was using already. When a newspaper launched their Net services and offered 5MB, it looked unbelievable. Then of course came GMail offering 1GB with account creation through invitation. In fact I thought G meant the offered GB, till later realizing it to be the short form of the company. Hotmail of course increased the storage in stages, 256MB to begin with and gradually allotting 1GB for the serious users who stuck with it.

MP3 and WinAmp were undisputable rulers, both complementing each other, and there was PowerDVD to play DVDs in particular. Senseless email forwarding with all the recipients mail-ids openly put under the To field, and countless mail-ids from the previously forwarded in the body, so each mail began with the subject line Fw:Fw:... To some, anything received necessarily had to be forwarded, never mind even if sending to someone's official id. Now of course the messengers have taken over this aspect luckily for the general users who set up email accounts to just register on the phones, and mainly seem to use for the bank and other transaction related.

Weekly anti-virus definition updates weighed less than 5MB, and there were alerts to be beware of CodeRED, SirCAM and other prominent viruses that lurked on the Net, besides things like "I love you" that spread through floppies or mail attachments. Pop-up blockers to smother down unwanted popping Ads were all the rage, and separate scanners were used to get rid of adware.

MSN or Yahoo messengers looked too good to believe some contacts were online to exchange thoughts in real-time, than shooting mail and waiting till they saw and responded.

From the slow, Modem based Net connection that was charged as calls every three minutes (besides sounding the engaged tone when someone called during then) to 1GB for 3 Months Broadband that gradually rose to 60GB per year, to the present 1 or 2GB per day schemes, we have a come a long way in a short period. There are so many other things from the past two decades if you sit back and recollect, and having seen if not the deaths, outdated forms of many of the above mentioned technologies and terms. You surely know much more if from the same boat, and if a later entrant may wonder if MB wherever mentioned should have been GB...