I know turning off graphics / not having pictures show up in your browser is a good way to minimize your bandwidth and throughput when web browsing, but what is the best way to deal with email? I'd think a webmail setup would be better than an email program, and if you're dealing with an Exchange server, I think it only downloads the message titles until you open the email. Any suggestions?

5/14/2009 10:16:48 AM

get unlimited.

5/14/2009 10:29:23 AM

in most cases, i have unlimited / flat fee internet, but i've got to do some travelling and thats not going to always be an option so i'm trying to figure out ways to be frugal with it

5/14/2009 10:32:07 AM

there are compression proxies that you can point to that will help for images

5/14/2009 10:33:21 AM

I had to deal with a similar issue when I was at sea for a field research project. I was on a ship in the open ocean and our satellite internet system had very limited bandwidth.

For web browsing I would suggest that you only visit sites that you absolutely need to and that you take advantage of things like RSS feeds.

For email, make sure you're using a low bandwidth client like gmail in html mode or good ol' squirrelmail. Set your email client to only download messages and attachments on demand.

5/14/2009 11:41:35 AM

if you use outlook, you can turn off image downloading.

good stuff.

5/14/2009 12:52:27 PM

if you;re using exchange, I imagine it has compression options as well that you can look at.

5/14/2009 1:26:15 PM

also, outlook keeps local copies of already recieved mails (i think). That + compression + download headers only should = way less bandwidth than webmail.

5/14/2009 1:27:13 PM

there are programs that will monitor bandwidth used by each running program and allow you to throttle or block them. I used one that was very firewall-esque, but was called monitor-something or other.

5/14/2009 1:32:00 PM

^^I believe with an Exchange Server and the 'cached exchange mode' turned off, all the messages and attachments stay on the exchange server until you choose to open it and only then does it download the message...in a sense, i THINK an exchange server without cached mode is essentially a 'headers only' setup, can anyone confirm?

5/14/2009 1:59:13 PM

I would turn cached mode on before you get on your limited connection and download everything you have. Then turn on headers only. I doubt headers only would be non-cached specific.

5/14/2009 2:14:07 PM

I just know when you setup an exchange account in Outlook, for example, it asks you if you want to use Cached Exchange Mode, which downloads the messages from the exchange server, whereas if you leave it unchecked, the messages remain stored on the exchange server. A POP3 account on the other hand would be different in that all messages are stored in your personal file on your computer, so I think the Exchange Server without the cache essentially is like downloading headers only...but I'd probably be using webmail access with browser images turned off so I would download headers but not the message itself until I opened a particular message.

I think cached exchange mode is basically for people who need to login, get all their messages, and then disconnect...I wouldnt need to do that, I'd only need to login occasionally, and open up a few messages here and there

[Edited on May 14, 2009 at 6:09 PM. Reason : .]

5/14/2009 6:07:22 PM

I'm not an Exchange Admin or an expert with Outlook. However, I imagine if you poke around, you should be able to limit your local client not to download attachments, to cut off the message after so many KB downloaded, download headers only (as you mentioned), etc.

Beyond that, look into a text-only email client interface in Exchange. No idea if this is possible, but I imagine it is with enough poking around.

Note: There is software out there which specializes in performing all sorts of nifty tricks with data before it goes out over a network. Application independent. Compression is one part of it, but keep going beyond that to squeeze as much as you can out of it. That, and anything else, is probably overengineering the solution.

5/14/2009 10:33:10 PM

If I recall correctly even with POP3 at the protocol level you can list headers without retrieving messages, and retrieve messages without deleting them. I dunno when it became cool for clients to deprecate this functionality, but I vaguely recall Eudora having options to do this back in the day. I suspect Microsoft, at least, has a motive...

[Edited on May 15, 2009 at 1:54 AM. Reason : .]

5/15/2009 1:51:42 AM