| Newsgroups |
gmane.mail.im2000 |
| Message-ID |
<[email protected]> |
On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 08:29:33AM -0600, Charles Cazabon wrote:
> [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> > As far as I can see, this is not the problem. The problem is the cost
> > of maintaining the network connection. In case of IM2000, it seems
> > the recipient needs to maintain network connection while he is trying
> > to decide which email actually to see.
> >
> > In Eastern Europe, this is a cost people would not tolerate. For
> > example, my mother automatically discards messages greater than
> > 30K---so your 65K message would have never made it to her mailbox.
>
> IM2000 will reduce the cost of retrieving your mail. In your mother's case,
> she can retrieve all of her waiting notifications very quickly (they're very
> small, and the protocol doesn't involve a lot of round-trip delays), her MUA
> will automatically then retrieve messages from her regular correspondents (all
> in parallel, perhaps, to maximize throughput and minimize aggregate transfer
> time). It might also automatically retrieve only the summary headers of all
> of her other waiting messages, which she can look through /offline/ and decide
> which to ignore and which to retreive automatically the /next/ time she's
> online for a minute or two.
I thought about that. But it is often the case that you decide whether
to retrieve certain messages based on reading first some related
messages. Think of how you might decide to read a thread on a
mailinglist: you read the first message, and then you may decide not
to even look at the other messages in the thread.
>
> Between that, the lower incidence of UBE in her "inbox" (because of the
> different cost structure of IM2000), and the more efficient protocols, she'll
> use less online time to get her mail than she does today.
>
Well, perhaps. But if my mother has to dial up several times during
emailing, she would have to wait for the modem to connect----and would
think about the fact that the first minute costs 60% more than the
following minutes.
One would have to see IM2000 in action. But as far as I can tell, in
Eastern Europe you cannot count on prices to go down or technology to
improve significantly in the future. Think about the fact that online
shopping just cannot take off in Hungary. It is another matter that
Hungary has the most cellphones per capita in the world, and for a
user SMS appears to work similarly to IM2000.
But saying "IM2000 is not worth it" is too much of a blanket
statement. It certainly will worth it for permanently connected
users.
Mate
--
---
Mate Wierdl | Dept. of Math. Sciences | University of Memphis
Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html