Re: How Much Is A GigaByte In Terms Of eMail Activity?

[Thor Kottelin]

"(PeteCresswell)" <x...@y.Invalid> wrote in message
news:3dsap8p44bi9t1pvh...@4ax.com...

> Is a gig a *lot* of email - as in an average user's email for 2 months?
> or is it something that somebody could burn through in a couple of days.
>
> The genesis of this question is a 4g mobile hotspot device that offers
> prepaid data at $14 per gigabyte

The answer depends on your usage habits. Do you send and receive short
plain-text email messages only? Messages similar to this Netnews article
are typically a couple of kilobytes long. You would need hundreds of
thousands of such messages to fill a gigabyte.

If your typical email message includes file attachments, that changes
everything. It is possible to send email messages that are several
megabytes in size. I once exchanged email with the support people at
Adobe, and they sent every reply as a PDF attachment. If that is what you
are up against, prepare for your gigabytes to run out much faster.

Crossposted to comp.mail.misc; follow-ups set.

--
Thor Kottelin
http://www.anta.net/

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Thor Kottelin:

>The answer depends on your usage habits. Do you send and receive short
>plain-text email messages only? Messages similar to this Netnews article
>are typically a couple of kilobytes long. You would need hundreds of
>thousands of such messages to fill a gigabyte.

Thanks.

It's looking good for me then.

The worst my email gets is HTML emails from Outlook users presented via
Good For Enterprise on my Android device. Occasional .PDF attachments
of sample reports, but no more than 10% of the time - and Good makes
downloading attachments optional... You have to explicitly request each
attachment.
--
Pete Cresswell

[Cassandra von Ahrcanburg]

On Fri, 17 May 2013 11:12:43 +0300
"Thor Kottelin" <th...@anta.net> wrote:

>> The genesis of this question is a 4g mobile hotspot device that
>> offers prepaid data at $14 per gigabyte
>
> The answer depends on your usage habits. Do you send and receive short
> plain-text email messages only? Messages similar to this Netnews
> article are typically a couple of kilobytes long. You would need
> hundreds of thousands of such messages to fill a gigabyte.
>
> If your typical email message includes file attachments, that changes
> everything. It is possible to send email messages that are several
> megabytes in size. I once exchanged email with the support people at
> Adobe, and they sent every reply as a PDF attachment. If that is what
> you are up against, prepare for your gigabytes to run out much faster.

Fortunately, mobile mail clients (I use K9) have an option (usually set
this way by default) not to download the full message at first. There
are usually several bounderies to pass:

- header (minimal)
- body
- attachments
- pictures (external content)

As stated, the last option isn't really part of the mail itself. The
mail is HTML and just refers to external images or other content on
remote (web-) servers. HTML is out of the barn for a while now and
unfortunately, we probably won't get it back in there.

My K9 is configured to DL the header and body by default. If for some
reason I feel the urge to see the attachment while I am on the go, I
have to tap a button. Most of the mails with attachments I get aren't
any use to me on my phone anyway, so I just leave the mail and look at
it when I am at my desk. That saves a lot of mobile bandwidth. BTW. I
only have 1GB per month aswell.

Now if the LTL-connection is the only one you have, then 1GB is a
pretty tight squeeze. If it is a connection you have additionally,
just to power you phone, normally you should be fine. You do have WLAN
at home, right? ;-)

Remember, while on a desktop 1GB isn't much, on a phone it can be quite
ok. If an mp3 attachment is 2MB in size, then you need to get (and
download) 200 of them to reach the 1GB. I burned through my 1GB only
once before the month was over when I didn't watch my config and my
phone downloaded and updated all apps via 3G.

HTHH
Cassi