Telstra 3G account running low

I posted about a Telstra Pre-Paid Mobile Wi-Fi awhile back:
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201101/telstra-pre-paid-wifi-mf30.html
http://bkhome.org/archive/blog2/201102/telstra-pre-paid-mobile-wi-fi-mf30.html

I bought it on 2nd of February and it came with 5GB transfer for 3 months. Not even 2 months gone by and I have 890MB left ...and I tried to go very easy on downloads. Avoided watching any videos.

So, I am going to Perth soon, and I will buy 10GB with expiry after 365 days, costing AU $150. Based on my current rate of usage, I will be lucky if that lasts me for 3 months!

Note that I have canceled my satellite account. It is better price-wise, however the performance of Telstra's 3G wireless is so superior that I am prepared to pay the premium price. (for those that don't know, Telstra is my only wireless option in my rural location)

I was thinking that I will want to run the latest T2 soon, which will mean a massive download of source packages. I might do it next time I am in Perth -- I could go into McDonalds early morning for a cup of coffee and start the download. A friend of mine uses their free Internet on a regular basis and says that it is very fast.

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Comments

T2-8
Username: Grumpywolfe13
Hi Barry I too have had a interest in the T2-8 and have tried to build it but my first atemts have not been well. I downloaded one of there pre-built iso and set up a laptop with it the used [code]svn co http://svn2.exactcode.de/t2/branches/8.0[/code] to download the source files. Ran ./scripts/Config set up for i484, then ran ./scripts/Download -required. Next started the build stage with ./scripts/Build-Target. But when it got to stag 2 not sure here it started to work on orbit2 but had a error when I checked it was missing libIDL so started investigating and ran ./scripts/Download -list-missing it showed a long list of missing. I am working to lean but if you have any advice would appreciate it.

T2 advice
Username: BarryK
"Advice? -- not so easy. There is quite a big learning curve. You will encounter problems and you have to study the docs. My current T2 setup that builds the Quirky packages, has a lot of fixes and now only stops at two places, where I have to do a manual fix. Version 8 is getting a bit old. Starting from scratch, it is best to get the latest out of version-control. It will also have bug fixes (and new bugs). Of course, I could upload my Quirky-T2, as it's all ready to go. But, as I said, the packages are getting a bit old (it is T2 8.0pre), with some pkgs rolled back by me (for example gtk was rolled back from 2.18.x to 2.16.6). Keep at it. A good thing is to join the T2 mail-list, as those guys are the experts. One of our Puppy guys who probably knows more about T2 is kirk (the developer of FatDog64).

upload is counted
Username: jamesbond
"I'm not sure whether you're aware of this, but those wireless services usually count both download and *uploads*. You may only download a little, but if you upload a ton it will still eat into your quota. It doesn't matter which provider you choose (not that you have a choice as you said :p ) - most of them do the counting this way nowadays.

.
Username: p310don
"yup, telstra counts uploads at a great rate of knots, hence the super fast usage of your quota Barry. Don't know if this has ever been suggested Barry, but it wouldn't take much for someone domestic on the forum to download stuff you want / need, like T2 and send to you via DVD in the post.

T2
Username: ttuuxxx
"Hi Barry, do you have an easy way of downloading all the T2 packages into a folder, If so then I could download them all and Mail you a cd or dvd, with everything you need. My monthly download limit is 200GB so I have lots of room to download just about anything. All I need is your mailing address and a easy way to download all the packages to a folder.

T2
Username: ttuuxxx
"Hi Barry, do you have an easy way of downloading all the T2 packages into a folder, If so then I could download them all and Mail you a cd or dvd, with everything you need. My monthly download limit is 200GB so I have lots of room to download just about anything. All I need is your mailing address and a easy way to download all the packages to a folder.

T2 howto
Username: BarryK
"I just remembered, silly me. My own work: http://bkhome.org/t2/ I have modified the packages a bit since then, and it was an "rc", not the final 8.0. So, those instructions might not be quite right.

Tags: general