[Tutor] OT: need computer advice from wise Tutors

[Walter Prins]

At the risk of adding more fuel to the fire, I'll simply note that

a) I sometimes use Gmail while we visit folks in South Africa who are still
on 56k dial-up.  Initial log-in can be a bit slow, but generally you'd be
surprised at how efficient/quick it is w.r.t bandwidth. (As an aside, with
the amount of mail I receive on a daily basis, using a conventional
"download then read" client on a 56k dial up link would be totally
impractical for me, while by contrast the web-interface allows me to
actually keep on top of my mailbox in a reasonable manner.)
b) Gmail does a lot of in-browser caching, so re-opening a mail you already
opened recently does not instigate another network round trip.  You can test
this by viewing a bunch of emails, then setting your browser into "Work
offline" mode.  You'll see that Gmail will happily re-open emails you've
already opened without requiring a re-fetch.
c) As the web matures the trend towards web-applications being able to store
data locally and run off-line should increase, further improving bandwidth
efficiency on the one hand and end-user experience on the other.  (See fore
example this presentation on HTML 5: http://slides.html5rocks.com/#slide1  )
c) Stating the obvious but you can turn downloading of images off by default
in your browser, which will of course further reduce the actual bandwidth
usage by essentially reducing your web browsing to a text-only stream (which
of course to boot will be compressed between web server and web browser.)
d) Using Gmail means you don't waste bandwidth unneccesarily downloading
mails with big attachments (PDF files, Word files) unless you actually want
to, and also prevents you from having to download hundreds of spam messages
and/or your entire inbox before viewing specific emails, which can eat large
amounts of bandwidth.  (There is of course IMAP as well...)
e) Actually having access to your email from places you wouldn't normally
have access to it (on holiday, at conference) is a benefit you don't
neccesarily have with a conventional client.  (You'll only have it if the
client is on your laptop and you have your laptop with you and you can
connect it to a network allowing internet access. )

As for me, I use gmail but with Thunderbird as mail client on my desktop.
In this way I have the best of both worlds.  When at home I'll download my
mail as normal, when abroad I have an interface accessible from anywhere
with internet access.

I absolutely agree about programmers having to be aware of the bandwidth
costs involved with every operation they do, as bandwidth isn't free.
However, the internet is after all, a network, and the argumentation
ostensibly against web based services (especially potentially relatively low
bandwidth ones like gmail) on the basis that they consume network bandwidth
per-se, seemed a little OTT to me.  YMMV.

Walter
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