When did I first get internet access… Oooh. Good one. Mebbe 95 or so? I remember that any time I used the net my parents made me watch the clock cause the internet company charged per minute or something like that.
Does anyone else remember playing the dialup game? “Ooooh! 26.6! I can do better! Come on lucky 32!” dialing again
And then when cable came out people were in awe of not having to dial up. These are good to tell our kids.
I estimate it was '94. I know for a fact I had had it for a while in '96. We had CompuServe.
Wow, which brings me to almost a full half of my life online.
Had an old IBM circa 88 I used for BBS’s. Dinked around with GEnie and Prodigy until the early 90s.
I too remember the pay-per-minute connections, and reconnecting repeatedly to try and get a faster connection 
Used to tick me off that my area had such lame BBS’s because it was a toll call to connect to all the cool ones.
Had a friend get me hooked on Neverwinter Nights on AOL in the mid-90s, and so I switched over to AOHell for a while just to play that (and Out of Order). Guess that was my first “real” internet access.
First cable modem was in 97, and I’ve never backtracked any further than DSL (curse you Comcast).
Sure, but I wasn’t hoping for 32 with a 28.8 modem. 
Spring of 1996…to coincide with my going to work for an internet start-up. (One that’s still in business, I might add.)
1990 I believe. I don’t remember the type of modem we had. I want to say we had a 14 400 but I’m not positive.
I didn’t use it very much. I believe that was during my Test Drive 2 phase. I spent most of my time playing that.
I played around with it briefly in 1995 (my mom had it on her laptop), but we didn’t get it for our home computer until June 1997. AOL of course. Then Earthlink, MSN and now Road Runner.
We got our first computer in 1996. I remember looking at machines and the salesman tried to convince me to get a 28.8 modem because the one I wanted had a 14.4. I asked why and he said it loaded pages quicker, I responded by stating I didn’t mind waiting a few extra seconds if it saved me money ( now I’d kill anyone for even suggesting I give up my broadband)
I fell in love with surfing after trying a free offer from AOL; sadly I could not afford their hourly fees. Then I heard about this great new service called WOW (does anyone remember them?). A flat rate of 17.75 a month. , I jumped right over to them. Soon after all the ISPs started offering flat rates. After a while of using WOW I decided to switch because it seemed like all of their exclusive areas always were “Coming Soon” I switched to NETCOM and stayed there until our cable company started offering broadband, I have not looked back since.
First time online was in 88, with my Commodore and my 1200 baud modem calling local BBSs. There was also QLink (which I thought was just the bee’s knees) for a bit. 1995 I got my first real internet access.
I suddenly feel a little old…
I found www at 1995, but before then, had been dinking around with ftp servers, usenet and gopher. Back around 1988, I was using Tymnet as it was cheaper than direct-dialing distant BBSes.
I don’t think Tymnet truly qualifies as internet, though.
'86? '87? Had a 300 baud Hayes, dialed in to a SPARC someone was running a open gateway on, and thus to the net. Ah, news, sweet nntp…