[Gllug] news mirror sites

[Andy Farnsworth]

-----Start Original Message-----
From: Richard Jones
Sent: Monday, June 28, 2004 2:43 PM
To: Greater London Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [Gllug] news mirror sites

Yeah, I don't intend to make a habit of using Internet cafes.  What I've
seen of them doesn't give me a good feeling - ie. ancient Windows
installs connected to the 'net, running unpatched IE.  Hmmmm.  I'm still
waiting for a decent, cheap, Internet-connected mobile solution to come
along however ...
-----End Original Message-----

Rich,
  This is why I take my own laptop with me to Internet Café's, however,
many of them will not let you use your own laptop so I always call or
stop in first.  I travel 100% of the time for my job as I am a
consultant so I often use various types on net connections including
dialup (56k down to 14.4), wired via hotel (often 512k DSL shared),
wireless via hotel (again, often 512k shared), Internet Café's (Wired &
Wireless usually atleast 1Mbit shared), Hot Spots (wireless usually 512k
shared), and customer network (Rare, but usually > 1Mb shared, usually
wired, but occasionally wireless).  As most customers do not let
"foreign" computers to attach to their network, the last option is very
rare.  Of all these, I have paid prices ranging from "free" dialup to
over £1 / minute to connect.  Vodafone offers both GPRS and 3G/GPRS data
cards that I have considered, however, the charge for service is
extremely high right now.  If I found an unlimited download connection
with a decent transfer rate for a reasonable price per month, I would
buy it in a heartbeat.  What I consider reasonable for these would be as
follows

Transfer Rate
 32 Kb - Unlimited - £25  / month
 64 Kb - Unlimited - £50  / month
128 Kb - Unlimited - £75  / month
256 Kb - Unlimited - £150 / month

I don't really want to use this for downloads but I get a lot of email
and like to play online games while on the road, therefore, a download
cap is a killer for me.  At 350 Kbit, you get a Megabit every 3 seconds
(max) or 1 Mbyte / 24 seconds, you can hit their caps very quickly
considering their price plans:

Monthly cost Data included (per month) Additional charge per MB 
£11.75	5MB		£2.35  (2 Minutes)
£23.50	25MB		£1.76  (10 Minutes)
£53.00	150MB		£0.88  (60 Minutes)
£99.99	500MB		£0.59  (200 Minutes)

There is a special right now that doubles your included data / month for
the top 3 plans.

Even just checking my email each day, I could easily hit the 500 Mb
limit and the moment I start doing anything else online you can bet it
would take a whole lot more.  Just Slashdot and the Register are 191
Kbytes (~1.5 Mbits) of data, so a (non-cached) refresh of these sites 5
times / day would be about 1 Mbyte plus reading any stories.  Just
staying connected to the net transfers data as you email client keeps
checking your mail etc.  Without even trying on this dialup session I
have received 1 Mbyte of data.

Just too costly right now.

Andrew Farnsworth



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