Broadband allowance...

I am steaming mad and so thought I would ask what everyone else is doing. How many GB's allowance do you have on your plan?

This is not my ISP I am mad at but Vista and IE8 plus other programmes I have e.g. Adobe and HP Update.

Today my ISP provider emailed to say I was nearing my monthly limit. Not worried as there is still enough there. However, in the past two days I have had 2 x 14MB updates to do and tonight I get Microsoft asking me to download fifteen updates! This is plainly ridiculous as they are using all the "space" I am paying for!

Maybe Ame is right and I should consider Linux but what happens to all my photographs, mail etc all through Vista programmes?

Anyone else experiencing these same thoughts about Micorsoft and others?

When all the kids were living in this house we had a 10GB allowance, and sometimes even that was not enough. On one occasion, I had to ask one of our sons to buy an extra 5GB because he had used up all our allocation downloading some humungous update to a game development project he was involved in.

Usually though, 10GB was enough for a family of 5, including 3 teenagers.

On our farm, we have 2GB and between Inger and myself, we have never exceeded it. Data traffic used by our VoIP phone service is also included in the 2GB and probably amounts to 300-500MB per month on average (10 to 15 hours per month of phone calls).

At present, while in Auckland, I am making do with a 500MB allowance for the month via Telecom Mobile Broadband. It is a little tight at times and I have to watch my usage, but it will suffice while the house is sold. Saves me paying $85 per month for the 10GB Broadband plan and VoIP phone service we used to have at this place.

What data allowance do you have DiDi?

Pretty much every plan these days offers at least 2 to 5GB unless you are stuck on one of the "teaser" plans from Telecom. Some of those offer as little as 500MB, just to whet your appetite and then they sting you many $ per GB for excess usage [:0]

DiDi;284303 wrote:
Maybe Ame is right and I should consider Linux but what happens to all my photographs, mail etc all through Vista programmes?

Photographs are photographs, JPG, PNG, GIF, ETC. Any program can handle them. Mail, there are 3rd party apps that can take outlook files and decryt them to an open format suitable for most mail programs out there like thunderbird. I have never in my entire email life used on-computer mail programs, I use server hosted webmail (hotmail, yahoo, UoW waikato.ac.nz Webmail) exclusively.

I think our plan allows for 3GB and last time I checked, we only used around 1GB per month.

re the updates - I also got those the other night when shutting the computer down. Boy, it took absolutely ages to download them. No idea what they were, or what they are for, but they have been downloaded.

I do not know how much I have/pay for,,I am on some kind of plan,,but do not know whcih one and have no clue of how much 1GB is or how much I do use.
I do know that I pay some 2-300 every month.
A month ago I had a NZ tourist staying and working for bed and meals,he had a lap top but hardly ever used it,,never saw him using it for more than a few minutes every day. I got a invoice that had 2.000 dollars more than my usual invoice!!! yeah you read it right! 2 thousand dollars! Me and hubbie used to surf wildly and never had more than what our plan allowed us to have. I spoke with the visitor I had,,he had donloaded all tv programmes from his home country so he didnt miss them while not at home!!! This is why I never saw him sit using his lap top,,he just downloaded while not using it! He had one fixed plan and to use as much as he wants to and thought everyone has it like this,,not in rural NZ I explained to him.
I called my ISP and told and begged for mercy, they were to call me back and never did.
I have mailed them and explained the situation,,that I do not know how much I use and that it was hubbies plan and that he died out of cancer and a farm worker did create this hefty invoice,,,my ISP have still not replied. It is a bit not fair that people living in cities can have free internet while we that live rurally get punished with such a hefty fee to surf. I find it very punishing that my ISP has this hefty charge when I actually are one of their customers.

Hestia, no-one in town has free internet! Everyone pays.

Are you on broadband?

You need to check with your ISP as to what plan you are on (your bills should also show this). Our broadband at home is under $50 a month and we never exceed the GB allowance, although I use internet day in, day out for work as well as personal...

Didi, are you on dialup or broadband? What limit? Most are at least 1GB now. The updates, even at 14MB, should have little impact on the allowance you have. I am regularly downloading 10-12MB a day and it doesn't make that much of an impact. 1GB = 1024MB, a fair bit of data!

tigger;284332 wrote: Hestia, no-one in town has free internet! Everyone pays.

Are you on broadband?

You need to check with your ISP as to what plan you are on (your bills should also show this). Our broadband at home is under $50 a month and we never exceed the GB allowance, although I use internet day in, day out for work as well as personal...

Didi, are you on dialup or broadband? What limit? Most are at least 1GB now. The updates, even at 14MB, should have little impact on the allowance you have. I am regularly downloading 10-12MB a day and it doesn't make that much of an impact.

I don't mean free as in free to no cost,,but one cheap fee and how much to use as they want,,this guy had it like that,,no limits,,one cost,,he did not dream of that I had to pay and get punishment pay if I did go over a limit,,

Just looked at he invoice,, I have 2 GB,,
The extra cost they have added is shoing as: 13715 x broadband ove (overuse?) 2.314 dollar pluss gst.

In town we have limits too, depending on the plan you are on, and yes, there is usually a penalty for going over it...

What is your payment for the original 2GB? That should be one fee, the overuse is separate...

It says 123 dollars per month and a 2gb booster a 44 dollars,,
and this other on top of it all,,

so this over use cost me more than a years uage,,,,,,

So that is $44 a month for 2GB basic plan - which is pretty good, and what we'd be paying in town too

As far as the overuse goes...I'd be asking the guest to pay this!

It's a timely reminder to check plans also...mine here, if you go over your allowance, just slows down to dialup speed rather than extra charges. My mobile broadband for my laptop does charge for overuse, but it is only $15 for the first GB over the allowance.

I recently called Telecom and reviewed both my plans, resulted in a savings of $20 per month by looking at past usage and making adjustments.

The answer for me is that I am on a 1GB plan (more than enough for one person who does not download films, occasionally looks at a clip on utube etc and historically only uses about 75% of allowance. I am on fast broadband as in 4.3Mbps download and 130 upload (doesn't bother me) all tied up with a home phone package.The Broadband part is costing me $30 a month. No problem with that.

I'm just wondering about the endless downloads for Vista etc as to whether they are using a good chunk of my allowance. The only thing I have been doing differently is looking at a lot of property information sometimes using Google Maps but mainly just the various Council's search options. Maybe that ate it and I am being unfair to Microsoft etc. [}]

tigger;284345 wrote: So that is $44 a month for 2GB basic plan - which is pretty good, and what we'd be paying in town too

As far as the overuse goes...I'd be asking the guest to pay this!

It's a timely reminder to check plans also...mine here, if you go over your allowance, just slows down to dialup speed rather than extra charges. My mobile broadband for my laptop does charge for overuse, but it is only $15 for the first GB over the allowance.

I recently called Telecom and reviewed both my plans, resulted in a savings of $20 per month by looking at past usage and making adjustments.

The guest was in between work and decided to see NZ,,,the trip to here costed same as the use of internet! This person is still unemployed and I will never see that money. He says he never dreamed of that I paid per usage and that much,,and I never dreamed of him down loading tv programs and thought he was just and only checking his mail,,both me and hubbie has had our lap tops hooked up 24/7 and I could not dream of a person sitting downloading entire tv programs,, this was kind of out of my imagination.

If you want to be devious, if you have a laptop, take it into town with you one day, with it switched, you would be amazed how many unsercured hotspots you can find.
OH has a laptop for work and drives around chch. He frequently connects to networks on his lunch hour to watch youtube etc. He preference are the ones with gang names in network name. He somehow feels he is doing his bit to reduce crime proceeds.
Someone else I know (and I don't condone this) drives around renaming networks, it is his way of telling people they really should put some security on them.

As for windows, just turn off automatic updates, It is what I do, then at the end of the month if there is plenty of the 1GB left I download some.

all slingshot new plans allow you to download free between 1am-7am so maybe that's what he's talking about? It makes no difference to where you are unless you have satalite. I believe slingshot charge $50 for 5gb amonth? Most isp's will either slow down your connection if you go over or should email you to let you know before charging you extra. Who are you with? I'd contact them and say you will move to someone else if they don't do something about the charges and you want to agree before any additional charges are made in future (or just go to another isp)