[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.