I am so confused. Trying to figure out data plans for Ipad.

[Mnemosyne]

I am worried I will go way over and end up spending a small fortune. I am rural and this seems to be the only way to leave dial-up.

Here is the plan:

Rate Plan Details
Included Data 2 GB
Additional data $10.00 per 1 GB

I mostly surf, pay bills and some shopping. I would also like to stream Netflix.

I guess I just don't understand how much I can do with 2GB before I will need to pay for more GB.

Thanks so much for any help for an ignorant (kinda) old woman!

[struggle4progress]

1. 2GB isn't very much at all. I think it's easy to exceed 10 GB/mo with a minor daily youtube habit.

I don't know exact numbers but estimates around 1 - 1.5 GB/hr are floating around the internet for video streaming


... the average encoding rate for video streamed to the Xbox 360 is about 2000Kbps. That means one person watching a two hour movie would transfer roughly 1.8GB of data. For high definition movies, the average encoding bitrate is around 3200Kbps and one user would transfer about 3GB of data ...
http://blog.streamingmedia.com/the_business_of_online_vi/2009/03/estimates-on-what-it-costs-netflixs-to-stream-movies.html

[Mnemosyne]

2. Thank you, makes it much clearer. Guess I'll forgo Netflix, will just web-surfing and DU

take many GB's?

Math mental block lately... :evilgrin:

[struggle4progress]

3. If you're going to try to stay below 2GB/mo on DU, you may have to consider how much

you read and post here and how many other links you open

When I had a 5 GB/mo cap, I turned off automatic image loading for my browser and reduced the automatic page refresh rate; I also tried to close pages I was done with and to shutdown my browser if I was going to walk away for more than a few minutes

Reasoning: I often have many many pages open, sometimes 50 or more. If you have (say) 10 pages open, and your browser refreshes all those pages once a minute, and all the pages have images, and you walk away to take a shower and go to sleep, ten hours later you may have downloaded at least 10 x 60 X 10 = 6000 images. You might download less if your browser caches images, and a lot depends on how the images are coded. But even a small 100 x 150 image might be about 0.1 MB, so if your browser downloads 6000 such images a night refreshing open webpages while you sleep, you've pretty much blown your 2GB allotment in three nights

[Mnemosyne]

4. I really appreciate your explanations. The dial-up where I am moving is slower than molasses, it

makes the dial-up I have now look like DSL. Service Pack 2 for Vista would take 8 hours approx here, and that's the faster one. :rofl:

Satellite net sounds notoriously unreliable and slow, going by reviews. Any experience with sat, by chance?

I also sometimes get 50 pages open with 4 to 10 tabs each, could be a problem.

Back to the drawing board...

And thanks again! :hi::hug:

[Old and In the Way]

5. Have you checked to see if you have a wireless internet provider in your area?

I live in central Maine which is pretty rural. I happen to own property that is the high ground in the county. About 7 years ago, I was approached by a local company that wanted to site a relay tower to broadcast microwave internet signals. I made the deal with unlimited free service for my use. I think the typical plan is $40.00/mo for a 1Mbps signal with a 20GB monthly cap. On a 1Mbps signal, you can run a couple of computers and watch Netflix (with some amount of buffering). I'm getting closer to 2.5-3Mbps. Compared to satellite (HughesNet, for instance), I think it's probably a lot better deal.

Does your IPad have both cellular and Wifi access options? If so, and you go with a wireless internet provider, you can sign up for the cheapest (or none at all) cellular dataplan and connect instead to the Wifi network via a wireless router in the house. The router connects to a radio receiver provided by the WISP. You can then connect up PCs, laptops, Kindles, Roku (for Netflix on your TV), XBox360, or any internet appliance you might have that requires an internet connection to the router.

Download and upload speeds are measured in megabits per second. If you download a typical music file or picture that is 5MB (5 megabytes) that's equal to 40 megabits (there are 8 bits to a byte). So, if your download speed is 1 megabits per second (1Mbps), it will take about 40 seconds to download it. A Youtube video might be 30-40 MB. An HD movie could be could be 2-3 GB in size (a GB = 1000 MB). If it's 100 minutes long, you'll need to have a internet connection capable of providing a sustaining download rate of 20-30MB per minute...otherwise, you'll be getting the movie interrupted by buffering. Depending on how you want to use the internet will dictate what kind of plan you want to consider.

[Mnemosyne]

7. I haven't gotten an Ipad yet, wanted to figure cheapest way to get decent net.

Your advice is great. I am such a putz regarding these things.

The only wireless provider with service in my location is ATT. (I know - yuck)

Thanks so much, you and sufferagette have been great helps! :hug:

[Old and In the Way]

9. Cellular wireless will be expensive, no question.

Streaming 1 HD movie will basically chew up your total monthly allocation. Under your plan, it'd be cheaper to rent it than stream it. I don't know where you are located, but try Googling "wireless internet and <your location>"...you might be surprised to find some resourceful local entrepreneur has a network you can tap into that might be a lot more reasonable than cellular wireless networks by the big phone companies. If you're lucky to find one and get it set up, the cheaper versions of IPad or Android equivalents will be with WiFi connections only. Only if you need your Ipad for accessing info while traveling in a car, there's really no other reason to get one with a cellular connection capability, unless it's the only game in town.

[Old and In the Way]

6. here's a couple of free tools that might help

www.speedtest.net this will test your current upload/download connection to the internet. You should run it over a number of days/weeks and at various times to see what your average connection speeds are.

Cyber Bandwidth Monitor 2.1 http://www.download3k.com/Network-tools/Network-monitoring/Download-Cyber-Bandwidth-Monitor.html

This is a free utility that tracks your actual browsing....it will accumulate the total # of bytes uploaded/downloaded per day so you can get a feel for your internet usage. There are other utilities out there and I haven't used this, but this type of utility would help you to understand what kind of typical byte consumption you use so you can optimize your dataplan to your needs.

[Stinky The Clown]

8. Netflix will kill your nwallet with that data plan

Netflix uses huge chunks of bandwidth.

Netflix accounts for huge percentage off all US data transfer. Netflix, all by itself, is a statistically significant percentage of all internet traffic.