[LINK] World's biggest luddite strikes again! / Content is ha ndmaiden.

[Chirgwin, Richard]

-----Original Message-----
From: Chirgwin, Richard 
Sent: Monday, 29 October 2001 7:47
To: Chirgwin, Richard
Subject: RE: [LINK] World's biggest luddite strikes again! / Content is
ha ndmaiden.


Frank writes:
>True, e-mail is largely an offline experience ... but I often find 
>myself needing to send big attachments to clients (code and data) and 
>the like, and this is much more palatable with broadband.

The argument's starting to get circular. I [accidently] started this thread
by saying "consumers don't care about broadband", and offering a few
thoughts about why.

Frank, you're approaching broadband from a business use point of view - even
if you're talking about a one-person business, that's still a different sell
from trying to get saturation take-up in Ramsay Street. 

In a way, this debate demonstrates what I already believed: that people need
a reason to buy broadband. Without that, they don't bother. That's not a
failure of government policy; it's a misconception that "because I need/want
it, everybody needs/wants it."

Rather than broadband, what I'd really like right now is an e-mail appliance
client, roughly the size of a Brother label printer, so I could get my 77-yo
mother using e-mail without having to do the Windows tutorials as well...

Richard

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank O'Connor [mailto:foconno1@bigpond.net.au]
Sent: Saturday, 27 October 2001 19:11
To: Tony Barry
Cc: Saliya Wimalaratne; Frank O'Connor; Chirgwin, Richard;
link@www.anu.edu.au
Subject: RE: [LINK] World's biggest luddite strikes again! / Content is
ha ndmaiden.


Yo all,

At 12:30 PM +1000 27/10/01, Tony Barry wrote:
>At 11:29 AM +1000 27/10/01, Saliya Wimalaratne wrote:
>>If your time is worth nothing, or you have a lot of it on your hands, then
>>a 56k modem may be justifiable; but if you use the Internet interactively
>>for more than say 6 hours a month on a 56k modem, and your time is worth
>>$10/hour, then the extra cost of broadband (say $50) is offset by the
>>extra speed and associated time saving.
>
>But this assumes you sit there are twiddle your thumbs while you 
>wait for pages to load. I do other things eg -
>
>-	Read pages in other windows. I normally have four or so open 
>in my browser and often more than one browser running. I might have 
>multiple pages loading in the background as well. I make extensive 
>use of the "open page in new window" command.

I'd suggest only because you have to. I prefer grabbing what I want, 
saving what I need and using said info/pages when I want to ... 
usually offline.

>
>-	Read and answer email

True, e-mail is largely an offline experience ... but I often find 
myself needing to send big attachments to clients (code and data) and 
the like, and this is much more palatable with broadband. (I rarely 
if ever use floppies nowadays ... Steve Jobs was ahead of his time) 
And when clients and the like send me stuff and huge attachments, 
ADSl makes it even more palatable.

>
>-	Search for other information via iRemember or sherlock

Both of which work like cut cats with more bandwidth.

>
>-	I might even do something which (gasp!) does not involve the
computer.

Ditto ... but now I tend to restrict that to when I'm downloading 100 
Mb or better files. OTOH, Tony you probably have a chance to read the 
telephone book or even better write a book when you were downloading 
MacOS or application (Graphic Converter et alia) updates.

>
>I usually have 10 or so applications running. And yes there is some 
>instability as every few of days I might need to reboot. (MacOS8.6 
>still)

Ditto. But that's a RAM/CPU/OS thing, not a bandwidth thing - 
applications running I mean.

I still can't see how anyone could argue the extra speed isn't 
desirable. In my case it is a necessity and in most net users other 
cases it falls under the area of a 'serious want' which will be 
adopted once the service passes their respective cost-benefit 
analysis. And I think that simply dismissing that extra speed and 
convenience is, to a certain extent, curmudgeonly.

I don't think broadband needs a killer app, I think that in the case 
of many users the added speed and time savings of themselves sell the 
idea of broadband. The trick is, determining when the service becomes 
economic for those users.

				Regards,
-- 
************************
Apathy is a great cause for concern
... but who cares?
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