We only disagree on the magnitude of 'large' -- look at how many blogs
there are, and how many folk flock to myspace and its ilk.
and how many people went there, tried it, and don't go back after a few
weeks?
Yes, there
are the "old generation" who think that checking your email more than
once a week is excessive and can't imagine why you'd want to carry a cell
phone with you everywhere or have an internet feed in your car... But as
Dylan wrote, "The times they are a-changin" and I think that the
overwhelming preponderance of the "new face" of the Internet are folk who
are comfortable with it and have it as a part of their lives. They're as
happy emailing a video to their grandparents as a couple of jpgs, etc...
doesn'r require a huge amount of bw 24/7 to email a video once a week.
They use an online whitepages/yellowpages directory, rather than even
THINK of digging out the dead-tree phone books [and dial '411' -- how
quaint.. (not to mention expensive for most providers],
ditto. The data transfered in a white pages search does not require a high
bw connection 24/7.
why buy or use
maps when Google Earth is so much better than any dead-tree map has ever
been, etc... and the bandwidth goes up and up..
actually, i'll take locally installed map software over google maps anyday
and like books vs pdf, your can't always replace paper with digital. I know
- i have a GPS and map software which is tied into msn's virtual earth. We
used both the map software and msn earth with the gps on Sat - along with my
cellular modem. I could not rely totally on the modem as we were many places
that lacked a NationalAccess signal and virutal earth was pretty much
useless as the areas we were in were not zoomed in. I did regret not taking
my pda so i could get the exact coordinates - we were grave hunting and i
left the tablet in the car at each cementary and marked the maps with an
approx location of the graves when we returned to the car.
And as the app developers come up with newer/clever (and of course,
bandwidth-hungry) apps, more and more of the holdouts will get sucked in.
Obviously ourMMV on this, but I think that betting on "large numbers of
folk being content with low bandwidth connections" is a losing
proposition.
How low is low? How much bandwidth do you think the average user will need
in 3 years? 5 years? If they only need 5 megs occassionally, like to quickly
d/l a video of the grandkids, is it worth the extra cost for a 5 meg
connection 24/7? That's what the aritcle was saying - people are paying a
premium for more speed than they really need. It's like buying a station
wagon because once a year you need the extra space - is the cost worth it?
dialup is too slow - but for a large portion of the population, 1.5 meg down
meets their needs at an acceptable cost.
--
Diane Poremsky
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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