Colored Backgrounds

[David Gaskill]

On Sat, 11 Dec 1999 11:33:24 -0600, John Thompson wrote:

>David Gaskill wrote:
>
>> Some  of the people with whom I do business use HTML format in their e-mails -
>> are you suggesting that to I should refuse to do business with them on principle?
>
>That's a tough one, since the customer is always right.  No
>need to compound the sin by using html email yourself,
>though.

Just seems to me that it is courteous and probably good for business to reply using HTML if 
that's what he has used. 

>> What's wrong with HTML e-mail anyway?
>
>One word: bandwidth.
> 
>> I have seen suggestions that if it is widely adopted the Internet 
>> will grind to a halt; HTML e-mail is becoming ever more common and 
>> the net is speeding up.
>
>But why not use the bandwidth for something that truly needs
>it rather than superfluous fluff like html email?  

What would you suggest that something might be? One man's superfluous fluff is another's vital 
communication. Value judgments concerning what  which is transmitted over the Internet can't 
really lead anywhere. No doubt pornography consumes vastly more bandwidth than all the 
HTML e-mail flowing over the Internet ... 

>It seems
>to me that having used the internet for a decade now things
>aren't a whole lot faster than they were ten years ago. 
>Back then we only had 1200 baud modems for our dial-up
>connections to text shell accounts, but despite the
>ostensibly faster connections now things still take a
>god-awful long time because so many people insist on adding
>so much glitzy fluff to their traffic.  Not because they
>need it to get the job done, but just because they can, and
>(presumably) it's k001 and "everybody's doing it."  The
>improvements in speed in bandwidth get sucked up in this
>type of thing and the net result is no discrenable
>improvement despite the advances in technology and
>investment of resources.

My experience is not the same as yours. My 56 K connection is dramatically better than my 
14.4 ever was. I do business all over the world and my download monitor tells me that files 
generally come down at around 5 K; the limit is the telephone wire.

Here in the UK ASDL access will soon be generally available giving us speeds measured in 
Megs rather than tens of Ks. This will no doubt produce a dramatic increase in bandwidth 
demand as video conferencing etc becomes widely used. The percentage of the available 
bandwidth used for HTML e-mail will fall from tiny to microscopic. 


David