How to Limit Data when on a cruise
- Thread starter pmm0724
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kundas1
Well-Known Member
Best thing to do is hit "airplane mode" when not using it and when you need to check things turn it off and check FB and emails and then turn it back on... also you can turn on/off live tiles I believe but I'm not sure what the process is for that. I'm sure someone else can tell you how.
kundas1
Well-Known Member
Ahh, there ya go...
Just back from a 15 day cruise, and connecting to the Internet at sea was no different than it was 8 years ago. On every ocean/sea cruise, Internet access was always sold by time, like $100 for 50 min (50 cents/min), or ad hoc, $1.00/min. There was no specific data upload/download limit or per MB cost.
Data limits would be superfluous anyway because access at sea is extremely slow. Getting 10 kb/sec was as good as it got. Downloading a 3.6 MB file needed for a project took 20 minutes (about $3.00 per MB), whereas at home it would have taken a second or two. Really, I should have known better.
The reason for slowness is routing the signals through satellite link means the data is sent to the satellite, relayed to a land-based server, back to outer space, and finally beamed down to the ship and to the passenger via Wi-Fi or wired workstations. Easy to see why it's slow: each up/down trip to the satellite takes 0.25 sec.
A long, slow path means there's no need to worry about having to throttle your connection--it's already been done for you! All that's required is a good stash of cash and heaps of patience.
G-man
Member
Do what I do. I remote to my home computer from the ship. I am using TeamViewer now (free for personal use), but used GoToMyPC in the past. I then do all the work I need done, check email, browse, etc. on the home computer, and the only data transferred is the screen. I have taken many cruises, and this has always been a great solution.
It's not a problem of DATA for me, rather the actual functionality at such as slow speed that made me choose this solution.
It's not a problem of DATA for me, rather the actual functionality at such as slow speed that made me choose this solution.
I'd propose not to use your eMail program, but the respective webmail site, if there is one. That doesn't transfer the data to your PC.
If you insist to use your eMail program it would be helpful to know which one, then one could tell you where to set, that it downloads only headers.
FB will cost you data any way, cause it shows all the pictures. I can't think of a reasonable way to prevent that.
G-man's tip IMHO has the disadvantage, that Teamviewer itself costs some data transfer, since it's essentially one big picture and many small pictures you transfer. Although I agree that Teamviewer seems to be bandwidth friendly. BTW: Teamviewer on the SP2 is perhaps THE application which shows the limitation of tiny screen+unprecise stylus the best :-(
If you insist to use your eMail program it would be helpful to know which one, then one could tell you where to set, that it downloads only headers.
FB will cost you data any way, cause it shows all the pictures. I can't think of a reasonable way to prevent that.
G-man's tip IMHO has the disadvantage, that Teamviewer itself costs some data transfer, since it's essentially one big picture and many small pictures you transfer. Although I agree that Teamviewer seems to be bandwidth friendly. BTW: Teamviewer on the SP2 is perhaps THE application which shows the limitation of tiny screen+unprecise stylus the best :-(
G-man
Member
If you force the Quality setting to Optimize speed, the data transferred is very small. I use a mouse with mine, so the stylus problem as not been a factor.
Out at sea, I've found email painfully slow to use. Even if using webmail (which I always do these days), there is still a significant amount of data involved in receiving web pages, given the gobs of javascript, images, etc. that come along with loading a site.
Webmail sites like comcast.net are absurdly data-heavy. If you're going to attempt it, at least turn off image rendering. The problem remains that downloading/uploading attachments is impractical. Having a busy email account is itself a hazard, that is, retrieving just the headers can be prohibitive, let alone attempting to examine the contents of selected email messages.
Email usually requires more than a few round trips routed through a satellite orbiting 35,700 km above sea level. Ship-to-shore-to-ship takes 0.5 sec at the speed of light. No point arguing with Nature, we may not like it, but need to accept it as it is.
What I've done is send email to Gmail and force it to use the basic HTML-only website (there's a trick to forcing it in the browser by disabling Javascript, loading Gmail to get the error, and then saving the preference for basic HTML view, assuming Google didn't change things again). There are, additionally, other standalone email clients that can be configured not to download anything beyond text (and probably filter attachments too).
Edit to add:
Oh yes, and I use the Opera browser (12.x) so on my old subnotebook back when I had limited bandwidth, I could instantly toggle on/off all scripting, plugins like Flash, graphics, cookies, etc. I don't think people these days have any idea how much faster and leaner websites are without scripting/plugin overhead, as I still surf with Javascript, Flash, and graphics disabled out of habit.
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