To kick start this blog today, I present to you Tip #1.
Most people regard downloading as "downloading a file" off the Internet, be it a song, video, photo or an application. The truth is, anytime you're using the Internet, something is being downloaded.
Does surfing the web count as downloading? Let's take an example. Suppose I am looking through my friend's photos on the photo-sharing website Flickr. As I click from page to page, the photos gradually load into my computer and are displayed on my screen.Hang on there, the photos load into my computer. That's right. The photos were loaded into my computer. But from where? From the Internet of course. And how did they get to my computer from the Internet? They were downloaded, of course! From Flickr's website!
And what about the captions and titles of the photos? They were downloaded too. What about the buttons, and menu bars, and... downloaded. Of course. Everything you see on webpages when surfing the web is downloaded.
To define simply, downloading refers to transfer of data/information/webpages/files/anything from another computer to yours.
What about the opposite of downloading? There is already a term for it, it's called uploading. When you are downloading from a website, the website is uploading to you. Similarly, when you are sending someone a file via MSN, you are uploading to him, while he is downloading from you. Simple, isn't it?
Moving on, let me point out why it is important to know that surfing the web, is in fact, a kind of downloading. Today I roughly showed my aunt how to surf the Internet from her mobile phone, and she asked me how is she charged for it. I told her that she is charged 1 cent (RM 0.01) per kilobyte (KB) she uses (download and upload), not by the amount of time she is on the Internet. She was kind of puzzled, because she was just surfing the web (viewing some webpages) and not downloading anything onto her phone. Apparently she had the idea that "downloading" refers only to "downloading and saving files". She wasn't aware that surfing the web was "downloading webpages to see".
In Malaysia, almost all mobile operators charge 1 cent (or 0.5 cent at off-peak hours) per kilobyte used from GPRS, EDGE, 3G or 3.5G. Assume that the rate was fixed at 1 cent. If you tried to view this blog on your mobile phone, you would have downloaded (at this time of writing) 807 kilobytes. Taking into account of today's faster Internet speeds and massive hard drives, that's not a lot, but consider this:807 × 0.01 = RM 8.07
That was only for a page full of text and a small profile picture. What if there were photos? Or perhaps some fancy Flash animation? The charges would eventually build-up to become astronomical, and you can kiss your credit goodbye.
You should also take into account that your phone needs to make requests to the websites it is visiting (to request for the pages you want to see), hence there is also some uploading involved. However these uploads are relatively small in size (a kilobyte or less, per request), so their effect on the charges aren't as huge as the downloads.
To sum things up:
- Surfing the web, loading a webpage, is downloading.
- Most local operators charge Internet usage by kilobytes downloaded and uploaded, not usage time.
- If you want to surf the net often from your phone, consider subscribing to a data plan. Otherwise, limit yourself to visiting mobile versions of websites, such as Facebook mobile (http://m.facebook.com) and Flickr mobile (http://m.flickr.com). Maxis, for example, provides plans such as RM 2 for an hour (limit 100MB usage), RM 8 for a day (limit 500MB usage) etc. Dial *100*5*4# for a list of all plans.
How did you like my first tip? Your feedback and comments are greatly appreciated.
i like (:
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