How many hours of surfing = 500MB?

Dharma_Bunny

I'm considering my options for when our current broadband deal expires and have been looking at dongles. The seem to have a low usage allowance though, and I would like to know how many hours of regular surfing, eg. websites, forums, not including iplayer or youtube, you get for 500MB?

I'm planning on monitoring my usage shortly soon too, but we have unlimited download and my laptops basically on all day, so I know I'd need to reduce that.

Thank you.

penrhyn

500Mb is about the size of last nights Doctor Who episode on the iPlayer. About 45 minutes.

Dharma_Bunny

Mmm, yes I've read as much, but I'm thinking more for just looking on here etc.

penrhyn

You could try downloading Netmeter and monitoring your usage over a few days.

http://www.metal-machine.de/readerror/index.php

Norman_Castle

Not sure who your provider is. With plusnet you can see your usage for each day. If you check your account it may show this. Without youtube, iplayer etc I use approx 50 mb per day.

PasturesNew

I use just a dongle and I spend all day every day online on 'normal websites'. I don't download things, I don't listen to music, I don't watch iPlayer, I watch the VERY occasional short Youtube clip (say 2-3 per month) and consistently over the past 2 years my data used has been about 5-7GB. The only time it has exceeded this is when I've actively and knowingly downloaded files/watched something specific online.

I have the 15GB deal from three.

Dharma_Bunny

Wow, so if was restricting myself to 1-2 hours max, the Orange customer £4.89 deal might actually be ok.
That 15gb 3 deal is pretty good though.

We're with Sky and I'm on a Macbook, not sure if the Netmeters will work.

stilltheone

Dharma_Bunny wrote: »

Wow, so if was restricting myself to 1-2 hours max, the Orange customer £4.89 deal might actually be ok.
That 15gb 3 deal is pretty good though.

We're with Sky and I'm on a Macbook, not sure if the Netmeters will work.

Does Orange have 3G coverage in your location? 500MB per month really isn't much and contracts are restricting.

If 3 have coverage, I would go that route in conjunction with the 3GB/3 month data SIMs commonly available.
That way you get 1GB per month at a cost of around £3 per month.

Dharma_Bunny

stilltheone, I've not heard of that deal, hows that work?

Nilrem

500mb a month is tiny for general use.
I was burning through about 50mb a day years ago with general web browsing/forums and a few hours a night of Ultima Online which was playable on 36k modem (so using tiny amounts of data), and that was before broadband was common so websites were optimised for minimal data sizes (unlike today where most people are on BB so making a page load in <30 seconds on a 56k modem isn't a high priority), and there was nothing like the Iplayer, or even streaming radio.
A single moderately image heavy webpage can easily clock in at 500k-1mb+ these days.

stilltheone

Dharma_Bunny wrote: »

stilltheone, I've not heard of that deal, hows that work?

3GB Data SIM £8.25

Buy a standard 3 modem for £20. That comes with 1 GB of data for up to a month. When that is finished, take the SIM out and put you new 3GB/ (for up to 3 months) SIM in.