Thread: Cost of downloads

Originally Posted by Carry Pine

I hope someone can clear this one up for me. I watched one of those broadcasts from Stu's shed tonight and just happened to check my internet usage after it. It used 102MB for the download. Is that normal? I get 400MB a month and watching that was a quarter of my usage. Surely this can't be right. How do others get on?

Carry Pine

Carry that'd probably be about right.

I'm on Optus Cable (an old plan - 4 or so years now on cable, which gives me 7Gb plus 14Gb extra between midnight and 8am, and I later bundled their tv in) but there are tools to help you calculate what you need and what deals are around - the Whirlpool site can help you with what plans are around and what might suit your particular needs (try this link to search for a plan that suits you) and if you spend a few hours trawling their forum you can see what current/previous users say about their ISP .....

Ian Smith's comments are worth noting - speed is relative and excess charges (especially for Bigpond and Optus) can be enormous.

If possible, try and find a plan that doesn't lock you in for years (Telstra does this esp with Bigpond whereby some of their offers require a 3 year signup which locks you in) as to extract yourself will usually mean big penalty payments - some ISP's offer no contracts to several months - but again if the plan suits then fine (eg I have been happy with mine for years now). The advantage of no or short contract is you can jump if a better offer comes along.

malb's suggestion to review your plan every 6 months or so is also worth following - it's a very competitive market and plans come and go - some are only on offer for a short time as a promotion.

Hope that helps.

25Gb for $49.95 /mth

Originally Posted by DavidG

25Gb for $49.95 /mth

David,
Are you happy to give the name of your provider?
PM please if not for general consumption.

Graham

Carry Pine, I suggest you try the search tool at Whirlpool:

http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/

That will help you to find the right ISP at the right price.

Just watch out for hidden traps like excess charges if you exceed your download limit. Can be costly. I am with iprimus and if you exceed the limit the download speed is cut to dial up speed but not extra charge.
Some of the so called cheap calls on the packaged deals also have a flag fall on every call you make

been with Optus since they started laying cable in my street.....took the highest they had ..."unlimited Pro".....which in acctual fact is 20GB per month peak period and an additional 40GB in "off peak" which is between 1am and 7am 7 days a week....and I am struggling to make a dent in the off peak download limit ( 10GB at best)....and I run two pc's off the same connection..the wife rings the USA for a couple of hours for less than thirty bucks .......my mobile is Optus ...tv is Optus and never a bad thing against them , in the past a couple of issues came up , but were handled very quickly and efficiently cost around $59.95 for the tv package and just under $70 for the internet .....oh and my phone bill is rarely more than $150...it depends on how many 3 second calls my son makes .....one day he will figure out if there is no answer .....then nobody is at home

I'm with David on this one - 20GB download (external to their servers, but about 50% of what I download is served by them so doesn't count) 512 down 128 up, shaped if I ever hit the limit, so my bill doesn't suddenly blow out. $50/month, 10 email accounts, and 50MB webserver space.

I chose my provider after reading through all the forums I could stand on Whirlpool.

PeopleTelecom fwiw.

TPG does $49.95 for ADSL2+ 25gb (18gb peak, 7gb off peak). Can't beat it for value from a decent ISP.

Originally Posted by wheelinround

John in comparison what do you pay for the pleasure

We have a package and it costs $194.00 a month CA. (Tax in)

This gives all phone use, land line only (long distance extra, but cheap) we have features as call answering, Id caller, and a couple of others I forget.

The package does not include cell phone, approx $25.00 - $50.00 CA (tax in) if you wish one.

Our internet (they do throttle it) we get 15Mb uploading and 1.5 Mb downloading. We have got speeds of up to a meg /second during late night. Unlimited use.

We also get our cable TV approx 80 channels. The better half likes that.

The internet alone is around $70.00 CA (tax in)

My son says your cell charges are better than ours?

I am not sure what your $ is worth to ours, but I hope this gives you a comparrison.

Have a great day
John

Recently I bundled the home phone with internet through Optus. 20 gb internet plus home phone for $99 a month which includes free calls to other optus phones/mobiles. There are other call costs, but our phone, mobile(optus as well) and internet bills are now very manageable and in less than two years, we will have saved enough on the three services to have paid for the new pc.
ADSL2+ and my oh my!! is it fast!

cheers
Wendy

If you want to go as fast as the line is capable of then -

http://www.iinet.net.au/products/broadband/plans.html

Originally Posted by Check twice!

We have a package and it costs $194.00 a month CA. (Tax in)

This gives all phone use, land line only (long distance extra, but cheap) we have features as call answering, Id caller, and a couple of others I forget.

The package does not include cell phone, approx $25.00 - $50.00 CA (tax in) if you wish one.

Our internet (they do throttle it) we get 15Mb uploading and 1.5 Mb downloading. We have got speeds of up to a meg /second during late night. Unlimited use.

We also get our cable TV approx 80 channels. The better half likes that.

The internet alone is around $70.00 CA (tax in)

My son says your cell charges are better than ours?

I am not sure what your $ is worth to ours, but I hope this gives you a comparison.

Have a great day
John

John thanks for the run down
Holly overcharge Batman I thought it disgusting here although it does cover almost everything except Mobile

although when you work it out my bill would be about the same maybe a bit more for phone Foxtel (pay TV) and internet about $50 more.

As for the damn web sites which have Flash media & pop ups embedded like news papers etc these are adding to downloads and increasing what you have used.

Originally Posted by wheelinround

John thanks for the run down
Holly overcharge Batman I thought it disgusting here although it does cover almost everything except Mobile

although when you work it out my bill would be about the same maybe a bit more for phone Foxtel (pay TV) and internet about $50 more.

As for the damn web sites which have Flash media & pop ups embedded like news papers etc these are adding to downloads and increasing what you have used.

This being a woodworking site I will not get into Flash and pop ups. I run a Mac and it does not like Flash at all. It runs it but groans the whole time. My ISP does have some blockers for Pop-ups, but nothing works perfect.

They are starting with Fiber in the US now and boasting 10 X faster than cable. My only question is "will it be 10 X more expensive".

You have a great woodworking day
John

Wheelin, just a note mate ....Flash screens are better for us, they use up too 75% less space compared to a wmv file...for instance a flash movie clip would be 1mb and its counterpart in wmv would be around 3.5 -4mb for the same file ...just remember every time you open an email, or accept an update, your adding to your account limit ....same when you open your "home page"....etc

tips for saving download space

trim your home page ...dont add stuff you rarely look at
by all means empty temp files ....but hang on to cookies for around 3 months before deleting them ....every time you delete them you have to sign in ....activate your account/s bla bla ....although little ....it does eat space ..

employ a good pop up blocker and or firewall .....and configure it to sites you want to open ....and when ....

set your updater to update at a specified time (free time)....and simply leave the pc running once a week to fix this ....for peace of mind use the "download but promt user before installing " feature ....that way you download in the "off peak " period, and install at your own time