[rlx0x]

I always thought its kind of funny that everyone believed this to be true when in reality you could just deactivate the sound in the driver settings. Which I did pretty much immediately, but nobody I knew ever even thought of.

Its a perfect example for the fact that most people will never ever change the default settings.

[atsaloli]

I remember punching in ATM0 to turn off speaker so my parents wouldn't know I was dialing in when I should have been sleeping. =)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayes_command_set#The_basic_Hay...

[brk]

I liked hearing the sounds. I could tell just from the connection sounds what speed I connected at. If my modem was falling back below 33k frequently, especially below 28k, then I knew something was wrong.

[habitue]

It's also a great example of a terrible default, and why it's important to think about what the default should be. I'm sure the guys designing it were like "Well, people will want to hear this, so they can tell if something is going wrong." In reality, the modem noise is the opposite of what anyone ever wanted to hear, ever.

[moe]

the modem noise is the opposite of what anyone ever wanted to hear, ever.

Speak for yourself. Not only is it music to a nerds ear, but it also provided useful information (line busy, handshake problem, connection speed, sysops mom picked up the phone) long before the modem itself would report back.

[toast0]

Given that auto redial was also a popular default, having the speaker on is important so you know when you've dialed a person instead of a computer. A terrible default would have been having the modem speaker be on for the duration of the call, and not stop once the handshake is done.