Loadingā¦
18
My cousin swore I needed a 56k modem to get on AOL, and my mom listened to him
Back in 1996 my cousin Dave kept telling my mom that a 28.8 modem was a total waste and we had to get a 56k or we'd never load a single web page. He was so sure about it that my mom drove us to the CompUSA in Tacoma and paid almost $200 for the faster one. Turned out our phone lines in the neighborhood were so old that the 56k kept dropping the connection every 10 minutes, and the 28.8 my friend had down the street actually stayed online way longer. Dave still brings it up at Thanksgiving like he did us a favor. Did anyone else get burned by modem advice from a relative who acted like they knew everything?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
maryg342h ago
The part that really got me is your mom driving all the way to the CompUSA in Tacoma and handing over almost $200 because your cousin talked like he ran the whole internet. That is a lot of money back then, and it was all for a modem that could not even hold a connection on your old phone lines. Dave acting like it was his good deed at Thanksgiving every single year would drive me up the wall. My uncle was the same way about everything tech, and he was wrong about half of it but somehow never remembered those parts.
10