I tried it for the first time in (early '97) 1997, but I wasn’t a regular and registered user before the summer of 1999.
1987, when I worked at a national lab.
do you know which year the internet became open to the public ?
I know that the net was invented in the 60’s, but I’ve heard that it wasn’t open for usual people until 1990-91-92 or something like that.
1989-90, if you count sending e-mails from a Compuserve account to Internet e-mail addresses. Started reading work-related newsgroups via Compuserve’s gateway sometime in 1991 or 1992, set up our own UUCP mail gateway and created our company’s first web site in 1993.
I got my first e-mail account freshman year in college, which would have been the fall of 1990. I also had access to BBS systems and gophers 
I got an AOL account my junior year-though I ditched that fairly quickly.
In the late 70s/early 80s, I dialed-in to personal bulletin board sites a few times. Not really sure if this was the true internet though (which was mainly in the military/academic world at that point).
In 1988, I had access to e-mail on the college networks.
I used the web for the first time around 1995 or 1996 I think.
1983; I had access to Bitnet through my job in our university’s computer center, and used list gateways to access newsgroups. I also had access to a couple of Unix boxes, providing access to bits of the Internet.
You heard wrong.
I’ve been on since 1988.
I had my first taste in late 94 when I went to Uni. Started on e-mail, then went onto BBS and surfing. Finally got it at home in 1998 and been hooked ever since <g> 
TTFN
Rick
Got AOL in '94…ditched it for a local ISP in 6 months.
This was before “unlimited access”
AOL was 20 bucks a month for 10 free hours then 2.95 an hour…fastest connection was 28.8.
Damn…should have invested in stock.
First in 1994, well, not me, my uncle was trying it out, and I was watching. Later became a subscriber to aol in '97, then switched to local ISP in '98 or '99. Always forget which.
Let’s see…First modem was 9600 baud. Mmmmmm…speed… I had a Macintosh Performa[insert number here] w/ 33 Mhz processor. I think I got on AOL in '93. I remember the first person I talked to online was named Psychomoo, or something to that degree. Wow, I haven’t thought of those times for, well, a long time. The first time I actually accessed the “web” was through AOL’s bundled browser, which never wanted to work.
i used the internet first (compuserve, when i was seven, which was eight years ago. ive had aol ever since the days when it first came out (or at least my parents have).
I guess I’m still a newbie – the first time I used the Internet was in July 1998. Now I spend way too much time online.
I had a college account back in '90. I never ‘believed’ the internet until I sent an email to someone in Iceland. I asked for tickets to a Cranberry’s concert. Unfortunately he only knew the bass player and couldn’t help me out. After that I did WAY too much MUD’ing and that was it for me …
I first hit the internet in 1987. At work I had an account with Prodigy IIRC, to pull information from Dun and Bradstreet.
i first went online in 1996, but did not get a home computer until july 1999
Ooooh. First computer is a good addendum. I got my first computer in 1980, it was a Commador Pet with the whopping 16K of RAM.
First email: On my first day of college (late September 1990) I plugged in my new computer for the first time, plugged in my network connection, turned it on, and had an email waiting for me. My college had network access in all the dorm rooms in about 1987, pretty far ahead of its time, especially for a small college. In 1990 everyone (and by that I mean >95% of all students and faculty) used email as frequently as folks do today. It was also a (virtually) all-Macintosh campus.
sigh what a computing paradise…
First computer: Commodore 64, 1984
First Web use: NCSA Mosaic, around 1993.
Back in 1991, I first touched the internet and used it exclusively for UseNet and occassional email. I used to be addicted to UseNet the way people are addicted to chat and the web today. Would go on, read all the newsgroup threads (well, in the groups I was interested in), post a bit and then check 20 minutes later to read the 10 new messages posted in the meantime. Wasn’t until later that I found out about IRC and then another year or so before I was on the web. Actually, the slowness about hitting the web was that I logged in via a UNIX shell and for me, the “world wide web” as a text only view through Lynx. Just wasn’t worth the effort.
First computer: Commodore +4; a crappy computer if ever there was one. Had about six programs written for it and they broke down all the time. When mine broke down and we returned it, the salesperson offered to just trade it in for a Commodore 128 instead of having us come back three more times with a broken +4.