On 01/03/2004, at 8:55 PM, John Daniels wrote:
The cheap cable contract now offered allows a download of 500mb per
month.
Can someone give me an example of the number of emails I could
download or
web pages it is possible to visit for 500mb?
Why bother with broadband if this is all you are going to do? Sure, the
speed of loading most web pages will be impressive at first, but speed
in computing is always relative, and what seems impressively fast today
becomes ordinary within a few weeks. When you have a broadband account,
the real advantage is the ability to download large files without
worrying about the time it takes.
For example, MacOS X 10.3.3 is rumoured to be around 75Mb in size when
it becomes available. The idea of even attempting to download this via
a dialup connection is untenable. The same goes for other software
updates. For example, the latest update to AppleWorks (6.2.9) is almost
16Mb; the first beta of Ragtime for MacOS X was 159Mb; the trial
version of the game Billy Frontier is 93Mb. Files in the 10-30 Mb range
are now very common, and becoming almost the norm. The ability to
download comfortably and reliably files of this size is the true value
of broadband, and you will find yourself doing so with increasing
frequency, just because you can: and I haven't even mentioned the
ability to play and download easily things like movie previews, music
files ,etc.
If all you intend to do is read email and view web pages, 500Mb will
suit you fine, but you will exceed it quickly when you start to use
cable to its full capacity. My account has a 3Gb limit per month.
February was a very light month for me download-wise, but I still
managed to pull down 1095Mb of material. Just because I could.
Believe me, 500Mb is very small, but not because of email or web pages;
and you don't want to pay the cost per megabyte once you exceed the
limit. You'll be upgrading your account very quickly after the first
bill if you do. Start with the 500Mb by all meams, but watch your usage
carefully. Download Jamie Curmie's Launch! utility (from
VersionTracker) and use it's excellent monitoring features. You'll be
amazed at how quickly your download amount accumulates.
--
Peter Hinchliffe
Apwin Computer Services FileMaker Pro Solutions Developer
Perth, ::::::::::::::::::::::::
Western Australia Phone (618) 9332 6482 Fax (618) 9332 0913
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Mac because I prefer it -- Windows because I have to.
