My older brother had a compuserve account for a little while way back in 1985 with a 1200 baud modem on our 128k Mac. The service was all text based. It would give you a list of choices and you typed a number. Something like:
1. Software downloads
2. Chat
3. Classified Ads
4. Sign off
Something like that. I remember they had an automotive section where you could pick a new car model and it would give you all details about it and let you compare it to other new cars. Basically the same as todays sites except it was all text. Really cool at the time. I printed out specs of a 1985 Ford Mustang GT and a 1985 Chevy Camaro Z28. Those were the 2 cars I was interested in buying at the time. I had a 1981 Camaro Z28 and wanted to get a new one. I was 18 years old.
When he canceled his compuserve account I started fooling around with signing in to local free services. Anyone could set up a bulletin board system back then if you had the software.
I eventually ended up on AOL and I've been on it since 1992 or 1993 and still use the same email address. I still sign on to AOL everyday because their software handles email way faster than web mail. There's no ads all over the place with the software version.
