getting sick of 20MB updates

Why does the entire SL client have to be mindlessly redownloaded each time it's updated? Come on, LL, use a patcher and only download what's NECESSARY (without having to reinstall SL too!). Sheesh...

Probably because it isn't too big of a program to download in the first place. And they do make some MAJOR fixes. You DO have DSL since you can run SL, so it is only a few minutes at tops. I don't see what the issue is.

who cares? If you have broadband it only takes a minute anyway. Get over it.

*sigh* I'm on broadband (and I say thankya for broadband) but I can see how this could be annoying. At the same time, you can't get on SL without the newest version.

I recommend downloading the update while you are busy doing something else, like eating lunch or going for a walk or even reading a book. That way, it won't seem like a wait to you.

don't play SL on dialup!

Be thankful they don't use a freaking Bit Torrent client thing like World of Warcraft does, where it only seems to upload to others 20 meg client updates are nothing - they take all of 3 minutes for me to download, what's the big deal? Generally they are not that frequent either - this has been an unusual period of updates.

Well, the upgrade mechanism does seem oddly inefficient. However, there are a lot more features I'd like to see before that one gets fixed.

Priorities, priorities..

Um... he's new, he'll get used to it. Expect this to happen once or twice a month on average. Start the download. Go get yourself a coke. Come back and it's done. Let's not fret over time wasted; you probably spend a lot more time in-world compared to the three minutes it takes to download SL.

I'll take this system anytime over the BitTorrent downloads I've had to make for AO when the last expasion came out

It doesn't bother me that much in itself, takes 5/10 minutes at the most, and you can easily do something else in the meantime. The only real problem I can see with it is if someone is on a broadband connection, but with limited upload/download (like they did in my former town, a few years ago, with the cable) - but then, change ISP very fast, because it'll always suck, SL updates or not.

You will download many times more than 20MB if you use SL for a few hours...

START MESSAGE LOG SUMMARY
Run time: 861.430 seconds
Incoming:
Total bytes received: 35743684 (331.95 kbits per second)
Total packets received: 98285 (114.10 packets per second)

That's with some flying around, before getting unceremoniously dumped out of my plane because a sim was full, but you get the picture.

Is that the problem with WoW? lol, it takes me 30 minutes to download a patch, and I've got a 4.3 meg connection.

They could just give us a diff and let us patch it ourselves. It aint rocket science.

Prehaps we can publish a TGZ of the contents for some of us linux users too.

-Adam

umm if I did the math right in 14 minutes you transfered 35.7 MB and you were only dl 0.019917 MB per minute atm of the capture. if the capture rate continues in one hour it would be 1.1950 MB and one 24 hour day would be 28.68048 MB or ruffly the size of one client update. So each update would be the same as adding one day in the month. But they probable only budget 12 hour per avatar per day, making it really 2 days worth of band with per user used. LL released 6 update in the last month right? or the equivalent of 1/3 of a month bandwidth.

if they release 6 updates per month for 12 months (72 updates per year) they would consume 2 year worth of band with in a single year. basically doubling their operating expense in band with. By adding a proper updating program they could reduce their cost in half. That sound worth it to me. But they could probable buy a product to do the job for them.

No, your math is wrong.

21mB (median update size) x 17,000 downloads/update
(including trial users in this figure, since I estimate there is at most 2000 trial users at once, plus a few re-downloads here & there)

This gives us 332GB of transfer, at bulk wholesale rates, this is about US$20-50 per update. Given 72 updates a year, this still comes to $jack.

By comparison, the average SL user uses approx. 200mB of transfer each day. Assume 4000 users login per day (of a active population of 15,000). This makes 800GB/day. 365.25 days in a year brings us to 278TB of data a year.

So, effectively,even with 72 updates per year, (more than 1 a week, which is extremely rare.), this is still no-where near doubling LL's costs.

-Adam

We haven't seen the last of this round of updates.

Indeed.

hehe, I found downloading a 20mb update to fix the text colors in the roundy boxes hilarious . but that's just me.

Heh, Adam, you provide the webspace, I'll upload the TGZs

Thats hilarious

-AP

LOL, leave it to Adam to figure something out like this.

One nice thing about dynamically downloadable streaming content is that all of that doesn't have to be downloaded to our HDs with the client -- at least, not at first.

I'm just gonna have to relax... until the next update, anyway.

Patches would really be ideal. I'm sure there's plenty of mature binary patching systems out there that would be available for LL to use. Even if the bandwidth is cheap enough that 20MB updates don't matter, this would still improve the overall user experience.

Once or twice a month on average? There were 3 updates each day after I first signed up alone! This is now the 4th update this month. So much for your average...

You actually kind of joined during a bad time.

I feel your pain; I joined the week before 1.5.

Just bad timing.

However, LL does need to learn the wisdom of soft rollouts.

I probably have half as many customers as LL, and I certainly would never rollout my software to them all at once..

Yikes, baby!

(ok slight edit, probably not 17K customers..)