Saving bandwidth by not downloading images/vid-clips.

[JD GUMBEE]

Folks with limited data used to configure their browsers to pass over the images on web pages.

You would see an "X" in a box instead of the image.

Click on the "X" and the image would be shown, but it gave you the choice.

This can save a load of bandwidth.

Mrs Gumbee used to have "Chrome" on her netbook set up for low data use when on a mobile connection, Firefox was set up for when we had unlimited.

Bandwidth Hero for Firefox is an example of something in between.

Anyone use it here?

 

[RVTravel]

I used to use an app that would not autostart flash video, but I stopped. I wish I had one for youtube. Thanks for the mention of Bandwidth Hero. I will check it out.

 

[hugemoth]

Best I've found for saving megabytes is Opera Mini on my Android tablet. Set on "extreme" mode it blocks images, video,etc. Other modes are available to load images in various levels of quality. I can surf the net for hours and use less than 5 megabytes.

One essential thing to do on Android devices is to log into your google account and set it to not update apps. This makes things much faster when your connection is iffy. Wait to update apps until you're connected to public WiFi.

 

[DLTooley]

Does anyone know how tapatalk compares to the mobile version of the default forum software?

 

[broken ed]

Thanks JD GUMBEE - I knew about this from years ago during the dial-up days,,, back when 14.4 mbps was as fast as it gets, but I had completely forgotten. Thanks for the refresher.

 

[frater secessus]

Opera mini is quite good.  Even with images on (lowest quality) it uses very little.  I am running Firefox through a compression proxy that does the same trick that Opera does

I collected some bandwidth saving strategies in a wiki page if anyone wants more.

 

[JD GUMBEE]

back when 14.4 mbps was as fast as it gets

Do you remember when any Bell-Atlantic Mobile phone gave you free unlimited 14,400?
With a USB cable and a little software, I could do my server support (all "terminal emulation" into Unix boxes) while out on my houseboat.

I want to say this was around 1998-ish or earlier.

People would crowd around the sandbar, to watch my (4500 dollar, 14 pound, 386/40 with 8 megs ram) laptop plugged into the four deep cycles on the boat.
LOL
After only 20 minutes or so, I could download a picture or two.

We also used to have conference calls using that bandwidth easily.

It makes me wonder why they cannot make a text/satellite solution a lot cheaper than they are.

Being a ham radio licensee, I have other options for the same thing...but they price those two way sat-pagers way too high IMO.

They should be around $12 per month with 500 text messages included or similar.

Of course, 2018 Marathon coaches, with 600HP Cummins and 2K of solar on the roof along with 1000 AH of lithium battery bank should be $10,000 also

 

[user 13531]

I've switched to the Brave browser and DuckDuckGo search engine on all my devices. It's stopped auto play video, intrusive banner ads and has no ad tracking or storage of your personal data...