AreWeLostYet
Well-known member
- Joined
- May 30, 2018
- Messages
- 174
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Streaming audio or (especially) video
Downloading the above media files
Visiting web pages with lots of high-res photos and auto-playing video
Text, no matter how much, does not consume much data.
I got my first desktop computer in 1990. Got my first "laptop - TRS Model 100" in the late 80's. Got right online with both through dial-up. That's about all there was then. With no internet, mostly people logged onto Bulletin Boards. Someone or organization would set up a computer at home or work to be a dial-up server. There were cooperative networks so you could send emails to users in other places where they would log onto their local Bulletin Board. It was very low bandwidth. For that reason, almost everything was text based. Text is, in computer terms ASCII code. Some people even contrived ASCII "art", arranging various ASCII characters to form whatever they could imagine. This textual approach was necessary because it consumed very little bandwidth. If you wanted to see a photo (jpg) of Miss January 1983, you would have to download a grainy photo file of about 150 kilobytes that took about twenty minutes to arrive on your screen. But text loaded right up because text takes very little bandwidth. You could browse forum text and it would load right up because text takes very littel bandwidth.
Please do not deprive yourself of textual content because you want to conserve bandwidth. Just visiting CNN dot com or Foxnews dot com will consume more bandwidth than downloading the entire Funk and Wagnall's. So do not blame your ignorance on the 'I'm conserving bandwidth' argument. I wish I could just close this thread because I'm tired of repeating myself. But the powers that be seem to be the only ones with that wizardly power.
Downloading the above media files
Visiting web pages with lots of high-res photos and auto-playing video
Text, no matter how much, does not consume much data.
I got my first desktop computer in 1990. Got my first "laptop - TRS Model 100" in the late 80's. Got right online with both through dial-up. That's about all there was then. With no internet, mostly people logged onto Bulletin Boards. Someone or organization would set up a computer at home or work to be a dial-up server. There were cooperative networks so you could send emails to users in other places where they would log onto their local Bulletin Board. It was very low bandwidth. For that reason, almost everything was text based. Text is, in computer terms ASCII code. Some people even contrived ASCII "art", arranging various ASCII characters to form whatever they could imagine. This textual approach was necessary because it consumed very little bandwidth. If you wanted to see a photo (jpg) of Miss January 1983, you would have to download a grainy photo file of about 150 kilobytes that took about twenty minutes to arrive on your screen. But text loaded right up because text takes very little bandwidth. You could browse forum text and it would load right up because text takes very littel bandwidth.
Please do not deprive yourself of textual content because you want to conserve bandwidth. Just visiting CNN dot com or Foxnews dot com will consume more bandwidth than downloading the entire Funk and Wagnall's. So do not blame your ignorance on the 'I'm conserving bandwidth' argument. I wish I could just close this thread because I'm tired of repeating myself. But the powers that be seem to be the only ones with that wizardly power.
