How many Gig's does it take?

I am thinking about getting a mobile USB modem for my lap-top. If I were to play SecondLife with an allowance of 3 gigabytes of download per month available, how many hours' worth of play would I get per month (ball park figure)?

If anyone knows how much time you'd get playing World of Warcraft - I'd be interested in that too!


VD

I'd guess 30-60 hours if you don't go overboard trying to keep your bandwidth use down, depending on what you do (the fewer tp's or the less moving around you do, the better) and how often you clear cache or crash (the less the better, logging in, rezzing at my house & fetching inventory = 60Mb-ish for me).

Use a draw distance of 64m and don't tp somewhere unless you have to or unless you plan on spending quite a bit of time there. Don't listen to the parcel audio stream, or the video stream and keep voice turned off until you really need it. Don't refetch your entire inventory (which also means don't search for anything in your inventory if you just crashed or cleared cache).

For the places you visit, always keep an eye on the bandwidth metric. If everything rezzed in, it should be next to nothing. If it's still high, find a spot with less (or preferably no) moving/updating prims.

If all you ever do is log on to a lightly furnished skybox and stay there then you'll barely consume anything and likely last a month. If you go on a shopping spree and to a party you'll probably not make it through the first week.

If you want to get a real estimate based on your personal use, the SecondLife.log file will have the total amount downloaded in your last session at the end of the file:

Thank you ever so much, Kitty. I'm so glad there are people out there who a) know all this stuff and b) take the time to answer my goofy questions.

Looks like buying a mobile USB modem wouldn't be such a bad idea then. I could probably go to a party or two a month!


VD

P.S. If I can find my log thing, I'll get back to you!

Vienne - Before signing up for a mobile account I'd recommend reading their maximum bandwidth policies very carefully. Some companies are pretty harsh with subscribers who exceed their allowed bandwidth, suspending or even cancelling the subscriber's account.

Internet forums are a great place to find out more about ppl's experiences with the different broadband providers.....

p.s. my log file is stored on \Documents and Settings\Owner\Application Data\Second Life\logs, and is named Secondlife.log. The data you're looking for is at the bottom of the file.....

As for the WoW question, I used to play WoW on dialup.... so that gives you an idea how small the data stream is for WoW. You could play all day, every day, and never hit that monthly limit.