Size matters still…

In todays modern age we have a habit of getting digital devices with some pretty impressive numbers. Everything from a new 24 megapixel camera, or to a phone that shoots 1080p video, or a camera that shoots 4k video, songs at 512kb/sec bit rates for music. All these numbers sound impressive when we are purchasing our exciting new consumer electronics, but as we work in this digital world, we work everywhere digitally. We want to post a video on Facebook, or send some pictures from our brand new camera to our families, or even find a way to share a hot new song with our friends. We are also very spoiled with high speed internet as well, and people have a bad habit of assuming everyone is. In the area I live in, I have 150mb/s download capability, which is pretty descent but the area just went to fibre and people are now pushing over 256mb/s down and upload speeds, and they don't realize the neighbouring towns that are just down the road have not caught up yet. Some of the areas that are less than 40 mins away driving distance are still on dial up. 

Lets take a look at some of the size produced when we use some of our new technology. A 24 megapixel camera shooting an image a high quality jpeg image, will average close to the 7MB mark. Which means a 150 pictures would be close to over 1GB. Which doesn't seem so bad when think of the size of disks these days or the RAM on our computer, or memory sticks in our cameras. Which means to transfer all those files to a cloud drive at 15Mbps would take approximately 9 minutes. But you might be thinking, I am never going to send that much. You might to your cloud drive, but lets say you want to email, say 10 pictures, so about 70MB to a family member who likes to spend most of the time out by their cabin or they happen to live some place remote that still has to use a dial up connection. 70MB in an email, which is way too big and most mail servers won't even let you attempt to send something that big, which is being sent to someone on a 96kbps dial up connection. Those 10 pictures would take approximately close to 2(TWO) hours for them to download. 

But there are other considerations. How about our data plans on our phones. A 12 megapixel camera on a phone is making picture files that are about 4-5MB. If you shoot high quality 1080p 1 minute video from a device, the file size can be as big as over 700MB. This is a 1 minute video file. So 1, one minute video and about 70 pictures sent to your friends in a month, would have you over your 1GB allotted data plan. This is not including downloading your regular email, Facebook surfing, some fancy apps that use data, or even worse music stream, or even worse yet, video streaming. Yes we try and jump on WiFi spots when ever we can, but how respectful are you being to the person that doesn't have a large data plan or a slow connection? Also if you sending files that are not going to be used for video productions or images that are going to be used for print press, then it is like sending a 55 gallon drum of soup when someone asked for a bowl of soup. 

So take some time and learn about your device and don't always be impressed with those numbers, because unless you eat a lot of soup yourself, why have 55 gallon drums of soup around?

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