Bandwidth (was Re: Colored Backgrounds)

[Jonathan Seder]

>>>What's wrong with HTML e-mail anyway? 
>>Wastes bandwidth, 
>Never quite understood this "wasted bandwidth" thing. What 
>dreadful fate will come upon us if we don't conserve bandwidth? 
>I have this vision of South Sea islanders... the rise in sea levels ... 

I pay $5/gigabit for my Internet connection so I like brevity.

I archive almost all my messages.  Archiving plain text leaves a compact,
browsable, searchable file.  Plain text can be pasted into other
documents, incoroporated into word processing text, database entries, and
graphical presentations.  HTML is impossible to reuse - I must de-HTML
HTML messages with a KEdit macro.

Many backbone links (particularly transoceanic ones and those in less
developed areas) are congested.  As a matter of etiquette, I try to avoid
wasting this bandwidth.  I am particularly careful to report spammers who
bounce their messages off third-world SMTP server.

> ... transmission delay ...
	TCP/IP transmissions typically go in 1500 byte packets.  The
fewer of these packets you fill, the more likely your message is to
arrive promptly, in order, without retransmissions or tossed packets.