Using Data
 

I am curious if any one know what the average web page eats up in terms of Mb when doing general surfing?

I am using my UM sim and find I go through approx 5 euros in 10 minutes when doing basic surfing, or looking for flights etc. I guess I thought it would work out cheaper, but it seems the average website is quite Mb bloated.

What experiences do others have?

I am assuming you are talking about general surfing while tethered using your laptop right? If so, I can tell you that it eats up a lot of data. I tether on the way to/from work on most days, and during the 1 hr. or so, I average about 14 - 17 Mb. Obviously, it will all depend on what pages are visited.

I definitely will not tether on any prepaid unless there is a bundle data plan or it's unlimited. Or if it's so ridiculously cheap! I will just stick with using the smartphone. The opera/opera mini browsers makes the experience a whole lot better, and definitely cheaper.

On any webpage, right-click and then click Properties. For example this page was about 68k before this post. Then add a bit for the banner ads, one in the header and the Google ad above, plus any other images, such as the flags and buttons. Longer forum threads can run towards 500k or more if set on 40 posts and with fancy avatars. And quite a few websites go over the top with Flash animation

You might try turning off images being displayed on your phone, but that might make some sites a bit tricky

150kB per page is probably an average, some pages can be much more. Yahoo mail is about 150KB/page (mostly ads). BBC News home page, and Amazon.com home page, are over 400kB.

There will be a little saved on subsequent pages from cached logos etc but it's the ads that really eat it up.

To put it another way, at $5/MB (4 Euro), that's about 70c/page, average. A single heavy page can be a couple of dollars/euros.

It depends on if you are accessing WAP pages designed for small screens a high prices or regular HTML pages. A WAP page can be as little as a few hundred bytes. Most HTML pages these days are hundreds of thousands of bytes.

Thx for the info guys - Im accessing the net through my laptop, so viewing is full fat, I find Wap is a bit limiting.

I seem to be eating through the same MB as you bossman, Im travelling all the time and am lucky if I stay in one country for a month or two, so am not able have a contract that gives me unlimited use. :o( Um seems to be the cheapest at this stage for pre-paid data, but it really needs to be 0.50/MB to make it viable! I guess we are a little way from that yet.

If I wanted to view wap pages from my laptop is this possible? Is there a search engine that will let me hunt for just wap pages?

What countries are you in? Right now, the best roaming deals for the EU (+) seems to be Vodafone and Three. There are Vodafone Passport deals on various data deals. Right now it looks like Vodafone DE might have the best of the Voda lot. Three like home is great for Denmark, Netherlands, Ireland, Italy, and the UK (together with HK -- it looks like the prepaid doesn't work in OZ).

Im in Florida at the moment, here for a few weeks before returning to France. Spend most of my time in the Mediterranean countries for the Summer and Caribbean for the Winter. Will have a look at what Vodafone.DE has on offer, ideally I would go for unlimited usage if it was resonable.

Since you are in the U.S. see my post in another thread about T-Mobiles UMA access overseas. You pay the same, just as though you were in the U.S.

...mike

Thanks Mike

One thing I'd suggest is getting a WiFi adapter with an antenna connector, a high gain WiFi antenna (like a cantenna) and Boingo.

T-Mobile doesn't sell or promote their wifi/UMA service to be used overseas. In fact, if you call them, some reps will say it can't be used when overseas. We have used it w. no problems in several countries from Costa Rica to Ireland to Israel. There are dozens of posts at howardforums.com from users who make heavy use of it around the world. One user did have trouble in S. Korea.

...mike

I find that if I turn OFF pictures when browsing on a SIM data plan, I cut my BW by 2/3. One can always DL a picture by clicking on it, but this saves a ton of BW and also serves to kill the ads. Why pay for the ads to DL.

There are also various compression solutions for web surfing. The pictures look rough, but they are there. On Outlook, go headers only and do your first cut of your e-mail in that mode.

Thanks again guys, all the tips have made a big difference .. esp the no pics! Could you recommend any compression solutions Stu?

For e-mail, there is an interesting option for slow, expensive, high latency circuits. Check out www.uuplus.com It's a bit extreme for most of us but if you were hooking up over Iridium, I'd recommend it. Some mail programs allow you to download the first N lines. You may also be able to use a mail server that strips out unnecessary headers. Also, your server sould implement agressive SPAM filtering. Having a unique address just for your mobile and using a whitelist would keep much of the junk mail at bay. For web surfing, always use the WAP or Mobile interface to a site if they have one.

compression software
 

You can give a try to the free "toonel.net" software. (to be installed from www.toonel.net)
Its a java software so you need the JRE on your computer (to be installed from here: http://java.com/en/download/)

The toonel software uses a proxy and you can set the compression rate for pictures yourself (or just disable them in the browser).

In the attached screenshot you can see a short test - I loaded some news websites and had about 65% compression rate including pictures, flash and advertisement banners.

Chris

For email only - T-Mobile USA as an unlimited intl. Blackberry option for $20/mo. It can be turned on and off at will - meaning if you are going out of the country for 10 days, you have it activated for those 10 days. I know a couple Canadians who have T-M USA service just to make use of this option. ATT USA has a similar option, but it is much more expensive.

...mike

AT&T's option allows unlimited data though. :-)

Isn't the T-mobile one unlimited too?

Only unlimited E-MAIL; not any data.

If you have a Windows computer, don't forget to disable automatic updates while you're using data whilst roaming.

Otherwise, if you're unlucky, your PC will download a ton of data in the background without you even knowing.

Same goes for anti-virus software too.

Chuck