August 14, 2009

Sending Those Large Files

Filed under: Main — admin @ 12:01 am

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Nothing beats getting email, unless it’s some bloated message, weighing in at 7MB, which takes forever to receive and, unlike that big present at Christmastime, contains something disappointing. That is, unless you figure out another way to send those large files.

My rule of email attachments is to keep the small.

I don’t like sending anything over 1MB, which is an utterly arbitrary limit I impose upon myself; feel free to set your own limits. The 1MB value works for me because it’s the limit I put on my incoming e-mail messages.

Using my email program’s settings, I cap message attachments on incoming messages to 1MB. When the attachment is larger, I get a prompt asking me Yes or No whether I want to download the message. If the message is something I’m expecting, or something from work, I download it. Otherwise, it’s probably some silly attachment I don’t need to read.

One way to get around my rule is to send links instead of attachments. I don’t know how many times I’ve killed a 5MB attachment that someone has sent me, where the attachment is an embedded video. Sending the YouTube link would be smarter. It would also save sending 5MB of junk through the Internet.

Ditto for sending web pages. Why embed an entire web page in an email when you can just send the link? All modern email programs let you click on links found in the messages.

Then agin, there are times when you have to send something bulky. That’s when you encounter the upper limit put on any email inbox. For my account, it’s 10MB. That means any message attachment larger than 10MB automatically gets rejected by my ISP.

For sending those huge files, I recommend using snail mail. Sending a video or photo album to a friend is just easier when you burn the data to a disc and put it in the mail. That’s not speedy, but it works.

When you want speed, you can use a service like YouSendIt. Clicky here.

The Lite version of YouSendIt is free, but there is a 100MB limit on the size of files you send. That’s fine for most of us regular people. Otherwise, you need to sign up for a paid account, which has a higher data transfer limit, as well as other features.

After signing up, you can use YouSendIt’s simple forms to create email messages and send them with bulky attachments. There is no need to worry about filling up the recipient’s mailbox either, because the attachment is picked up and downloaded via link. It’s pretty nifty.

Oh, yeah: The link works for only 7 days, or 100 downloads. So pray that your recipient actually checks their email once in a while. That’s another issue I’ll gripe about in a future blog post.

2 Comments

  1. I mainly use Rapidshare and Mediafire. Those are very good services too. Mediafire links never expire and Rapidshare lets you upload up to 200MB.

    And I think Megaupload‘s limit is 1GB.

    Comment by samus250 — August 18, 2009 @ 7:06 am

  2. Thanks for the info. I put some links in there for you. Well, for everyone. 🙂

    Comment by admin — August 18, 2009 @ 7:11 am

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