I am doing my homework for a changeover to broadband. I am currently on dial-up which charges by the minute, changing to broadband which is charged by the MB. Different plans give me different amounts of download. I have no idea how much I would download in a month, but *guess* it would weigh in under 1 GB. Is there some program I can install to measure the amount I am downloading? Terry@nz

Whilst there are programs that can monitor the data usage, perhaps the easiest source of information is your current ISP. They do know how much you download. When figuring your usage, remember you will use more when you convert to broadband. You can click a lot faster when the web pages appear almost instantly. I did a quick search on ISPs available in your country (I'm across the Tasman), there are several companies that offer flat rate capped usage. This means that if you use more than you pay for, you will still be able to access the internet at a reduced speed. I notice that it is common for that speed to be 64kbs which is still faster than dialup. I'm currently locked into a plan which reduces my speed to 28kbs. Shared three ways that is really unusable. My little darlings have just blown out my monthly allowance in just ten days! You will really apreciate the difference that broadband makes. Just make sure that you don't sign up on a plan where you do pay for excess megabytes. I recall reading about somebody in NZ allowing his daughter to use a file sharing program on broadband, that is until the $15,000 bill came in!

1GB is a lot of data and if all you do is Web Browsing and E-mail with the occasional download, 1GB wil be plenty. The numbers start rising when you start doing streaming video and PtoP file sharing. Try NetMeater. That will keep tabs on what you are using. http://readerror.gmxhome.de/ Stuart

FWIW my usage is about 0.5G per month. I did use a program at first but found that this got in the way (defrag etc) and slowed things down. It was called Down2home (free and quite swish). I dumped it eventually but I suppose you might fare better. At least you could run it for a while to get an idea. I now use server info but it's a somewhat messy process because of their presentation style (your server's info might be better). DerekW