What is your #1 joy of having Internet access?

[Fuelm@n]

Of the 10 I listed, #1 would be saving money! I once saved over $3300 on a purchase I made online. Without the Internet, I would have paid over $7000 for the EXACT same items. So the little I do pay for access, it has paid for itself a hundred times over.

Freeware is always nice, but I don't mind paying for a great program either. I have donated money on a couple freeware related items, because they were well worth it.

And of coarse VirtualDr is in there somewheres, I do spend way too much time here, just ask my 3 years old daughter. If you were to ask her where her daddy was, she'd tell you, "On the computer!"

Please Remember To VOTE.



(I maybe shouldn't have added Porno, but there are those that find delight in such things.)

[mawil]

I'd say Virtual Dr is #1. I couldn't keep our computers running without the help I get here and at another forum I visit. Second would be the shopping. I can get things online that I can't get locally and many things are much cheaper.

[P3-450]

It is quite difficult to have a #1 joy for using the internet.

But my Cable modem has to play a big part. Email is a must and of course VrDr has helped me alot with puter probs and i find myself in here alot (maybe ill get back to work one day )

Totally onboard with the saving money thing. You are just about guaranteed to find cheaper stuff then on the high street.

In general i dont know what ill do without the internet

[NickC]

I would have a tie for #1 between these three:

- Saving money when shopping!
- Information at your fingertips!
- Email

[redruM]

kazzaa would cover porno aswell i would say.
but the main reason i like the internet is for the aplications and programs i can get. chatting and forums also make it interesting. one option missing is 'for educational purposes'. for me, since i am studying in yr 12, the net is great place to get resources for my studies.

[jmtjet]

Making money. Over the last 3 years me and my wife have sold collectables and antiques on eBay. We haven't gotten rich but made some spending money, and it's fun.

[f117nighthawk]

Of course I love VDR. I also love IM, shopping, P2P, saving time on things and stuff like that. High speed rules (when it works). I also like some games.

[Welshjim]

The absolute, cannot be duplicated, joy (if that be word) is the access to information, facts, etc. on almost any subject. (Like medical, historical, people, etc.) I found someone who knew more about my grandfather than I did. That was great!!
Number two would be a subset of number one. I have learned most of what I know about operating a PC from the Internet--forums like this. I would have been up a long narrow creek if I had not found this resource. Probably would have just given up on PC's. The number of times I reformatted!! The functions that I was not aware of!!
E-mail is nice, but phone rates are so low these days, that I could do most of my people to people contact by phone rather than email. So nice, but not revolutionary.
Same for shopping. No question that price comparison shopping is a wonderful advantage. But it can be done, still, by phone.
Same for stock market info.
IM makes me barf. Just a time waster. I shut the function off when I had it. People would contact me just/only because I was online. I would prefer a phone call.
I have no interest in games, but I can see that would be a big joy if I were.
One person's view.

[Calpitor]

I was reading an article about Freenet and the RIAA last night that gave pause to think( good read ). We of the free world have been hearing much of the right to download this and share that. The on-coming onslaught of the 'RIAA snoopers', 'Hatcher's Hackers', and the Internal Securities Thought Police GW has commisioned not so long ago the freedom of the Net is certainly diminishing. But then in comparison there are others with precious little options with the exception of what thier government will allow them. This above all else is the greatest joy of having internet access:
FREEDOM

[talamasca]

Access to an endless stream of information.
Recreational or educational.

[K G G]

1. Saving time and money.
2. The biggest/best resource for about everything.

[Nix]

Porno.

Just kidding.

Although as you say there are probably people out there who use it just for that.

I would have to say information although sometimes it can have it's down side if say you go to a mediacal site and find information that you read and don't understand and then think you are going to die or something bad like that.

ie the information needs to be understood in context and lay person's terms.

[user595212]

Hola,

The Web has brought the world to people in a way that was not available 5 or 10 years ago. I have the ability to find (although I'm still bad at Boolean searches!) almost anything, anywhere, because the software has gotten simpler and more accessible the longer the Internet is around.

Not long ago I picked up a free book in the newsroom where I work (the slush pile of things our reviewers discard) called The Dream Machine, about J.C.R. Licklider, a guy I had never heard of who was at several high-tech universities (among them MIT, Stanford I think, Carnegie Tech and PARC) in the '40s and '50s, who envisioned a machine -- and actually had put something together -- where people would communicate (the Arpanet and messaging), play games and do research. His idea had everything. At the time everyone was focused on bigger, more massive amounts of computing power. He was one of the few people at the time saying no no no! that's not the way to go! It was his idea to have networks and to bring computers to people's desktops and homes. The accessibility to all is what he tied together although obviously many others did separate pieces of the revolution. Read about the book here:
The Dream Machine.

This got me thinking. As a longtime journalistic serf, I have often had reason to recall the old curmudgeon A.J. Liebling's cynical dictum: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to the guy who owns one."

But! The Internet has made it possible for any man or woman to be his or her own publisher!! In a way that was never possible before, a person can, for the price of the software, an idea, a Web site and an Internet host (extremely cheap compared to the physical resources such as a printing press, delivery trucks, etc. etc.), have a pulpit from which to reach anybody in the world with his or her own ideas!

This seems to me in every way as important as Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack or the broadsides published in the 1700s that reached people and fomented dissent that led to the Revolution. Or even the invention of the printing press, through which the common person could read a book and learn. Where knowledge was not just the province of the wealthy and the monks illuminating the manuscripts.

The First Amendment as a tool of democracy has been broadened and extended over the Internet. I might not like at least some of the expression there, but it has brought new things into the marketplace of ideas. Things we never could have imagined.

Ten years ago when I was in graduate school it was radical when they got nice computers at the college library where you could go and put a CD in and access a massive database with the latest research. They were starting to get the catalog online too and it became a little easier to find the books one needed or even just the books that pertained to one's subject matter but which one didn't know were out there.

Now, all the information published today, and before, is available at my fingertips!! Just a point and click and I'm there (this again assumes I'm good at searching, which I'm not! but thank God for Google and software like Web Ferret).

Information gives me power. It helps me find anything -- how to do something like sew slipcovers (an example of one of my recent searches); what the latest research says about treatment of any illness or condition (e.g. the National Library of Medicine); it helps me find long-lost friends (Lexis-Nexis) and distant relatives (a couple of fifth cousins on both sides of the family, among others) and make new friends.

Last summer I made a connection with a woman in Dallas whose great-grandfather served as a missionary in China with my great-grandfather after the Civil War. Her great-grandfather's surname, as it happened, was my grandfather's middle name! (an unusual one so I knew instantly that's where it came from). She was doing some research on the area of China where they served based on a book she is collating and republishing complete with pictures of the places they served as well as personal accounts of my great-grandfather and -grandmother!! All of this is certainly something I could never have found in a lifetime of research offline!!) She also posted photos on the Web of artifacts from China that her grandmother (who served with her parents) donated to a museum. I am awestruck at what this has turned up.

More prosaically, the Internet has enabled me to dig up products I need at the right price, and sometimes things you will never find anywhere in a store where you live. I hate malls and I hate to shop. Recently I looked in Froogle for a desktop spike of the kind editors always used to have and found just one online shop that had them. I wanted them to spike my bills onto when I pay them as a visual reminder that I paid them, and in a place where I can refer back to them should I have to. Retailing annoys the heck out of me because too often it aims for the lowest common denominator, and for me it's not very usable. This way I can beat the retailers! As well, I can reward those who make a point of selling things that other people don't think of.

And then, the Internet means I never have to go Christmas shopping again. I hate Christmas shopping! The tramping around, looking for that last thing or two for a person on your list and the feeling of hopelessness that you are just not going to find it. Now it's just point! click! and you got it!! That saves me so much time and aggravation it frees me for all the other really really important things -- such as spending time with my 11-year-old son!

I am passionate about this. It is kind of a philosophical breakthrough. Pardon the length of this post, I do tend to run on.

Cheers,
Wendy