On 13 Jan 2003, at 20:29, jim barchuk wrote:

> Hi David!

Howzit!

> On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, David Jones wrote:
> 
> > On 13 Jan 2003, at 16:17, jim barchuk wrote:
> >
> > > Be aware that AOL has tons of users coming in through
> > > -caching- proxies that cannot reflect the true
> > > readership; you may have lots more NN users than
> > > you're aware of. I don't know what the current
> > > guesstimates are but folks used to mention 5x - 10x
> > > ratios. If you use the 10x then 30% of youe site is
> > > AOL. Of course there's always the issue of 'how many
> > > AOL users upgrade...'
> >
> > Hmm, my parents use AOL. Only the AOL browser
> > uses the AOL cache. Other browsers do not.
> 
> Ohh Kay. I can accept that. AOL has control over their
> browser, but not others. Accept but not understand,
> because 'server cache' is a server function not a client
> function.

Well, here's why I say it. My family's personal web 
page has a nice JPG file as a background graphic. 
When viewed through the AOL browser, the background 
looks chunky and ugly, because AOL's caching stuff is 
re-compressing cached JPGs at much lower image 
quality (to save bandwidth and make people think that 
dialup AOL connection is fast). When viewed using 
Netscape, the graphic comes down in its original 
pristine beauty.

Now I don't know if AOL is caching both versions of the 
graphic, maybe they are ... 

> However considering I just replied to someone in an NG who
> wrote 'I wanna dump AOL, how do I read newsgroups,' the
> question that arises is 'how many AOL users are not using
> 'the' AOL browser?' I'd guess a very small %.

Probably true.

I suspect most AOL users who really want to dump 
AOL are those who've outgrown the AOL environment.

David
dvjones(at)ksbe.edu
 

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