The AP article “Sticker Shock Still Reigns In Broadband” is being discussed over at Slashdot. My favorite quote: “Why - really - does Joe need broadband to read his AOL-mail?”. The AP article also claimed that the desire for broadband substantially slipped after the fall of Napster. I find broadband primarily useful for:
- Doing download software installs/updates.
- Uploading digital pictures
- Instant on — no waiting for the connection and I'm not kicked off if I was idle for 10 minutes
- Not tying up the phone line or getting clobbered by someone picking up the phone.
- My best dialup connection in Milford is 28.8k — roughly half a good dialup connection.
Web pages load faster, but sometimes the initial latency masks much of the throughput improvement that broadband has. Occasionally seeing a
Quicktime movie trailer is nice, but I wouldn't pay $50 for that.
Google News is now available.
NYT article reveals that the US Post Office bandwidth still exceeding that of the internet. Netflix alone distributes 1,500 terabytes a day! But gosh! what latency!