Sometimes the internet connetion speed offshore makes a modem look fast.

I went with AOL for dialup when BT "anytime" changed to mean "max two hours connected max 4 hours per day". AOL let you stay connected 24/7 which is what I wanted.

God that was expensive. The AOL always-on account plus I was paying for ISDN. 64K was fast back then lol.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=td-qFfTig88

Back in the day we had Freeserve, re-dialling every two hours was a PITA. We moved to a 1mbps Broadband connection with BT as soon as it became available.

Before freeserve we were with compuserve for a couple of years. I even remember our email address. 106362.2046@compuserve.com

Yup

Yup

I can still hear it now. Was a penny a minute shortly after I joined then it went downhill when it went flat rate. I was really chuffed when I got broadband and wireless although I did hold out for quite a while as ddn't really have much need for it at home.

I once had to download a 29.5MB driver for XP for my scanner. The ONLY way I could get it- downloading programs such as GoZilla would not work- was to find the link, disconnect, click on the link and then reconnect for the download. I couldn't do ANYTHING else at the time and finally (after about six attempts) got the file with about 3 seconds to spare!

Even though (around) 2.5Mbps is the best we can manage today, I love broadband

Ironically, my mobile data connection is frequently that slow today in many places around here!

And, l3v1ck, if you haven't checked yet, the pyramid is on the one dollar bill. (Strange coincidence that as I typed the word "pyramid" it was spoken on the TV- watching Horrible Histories)

I remember dialling up too. I'd be able to tell within the last few beeps as to whether it was going to connect or not.

I also remember websites being quicker and easier to navigate. Certainly now, some of the older sites load very quickly on broadband.

Interestingly, after the splurge of broadband, web designers are trying to build lighter and meaner web sites again. The reason is mobile browsing. Time is money, and if you have to wait for a page to download and render on a 3G connection, you're likely to go elsewhere.

+1. I do prefer a simple and clean look. What I hate is when you have the mobile version of a site when you want the desktop version and it always redirects you.

Hence why so many companies are making apps.

Amen

Genuine question - given a lot of apps are effectively front ends to web-hosted data sources, does making a native app really make that much of a difference? OK, you're not waiting for the interface to redraw in safari or chrome, but isn't the screen redraw either way a relatively fast process compared to shuffling all the data that needs to be displayed across the 3G network, which will happen in both cases?

if you're doing a lot of work in the interface or post-processing the data then obviously it's better having that running on the phone's CPU than on your web server but if effectively all you're doing is reskinning a table?

Jon

In my experience the apps are quicker than using the websites so yes it does make a huge difference. It's not drawing the whole screen that you would get on the website and it usually just loads the key information you need access to in button format.

Also if you go to the website on the device you usually don't have access to all the options anyway plus the text is really small so it's quite difficult to navigate to the area you want to.