Well, that was interesting to say the most.
I moved house, and due to Australia’s original Telco playing silly buggers, I couldn’t get a phone line – there was apparently no copper to my (established since at least 1970) house. Still, once I worked out the rules to this ‘game’, I had some fresh copper connecting me to the exchange. Since I wasn’t about to hand Telstra even more money after their rather appalling behaviour, I then had to go to my ISP of choice and ask them to give me ADSL2+. I was also moving my Home Phone to the ISP, so that took even longer with all of the processes involved.
The upshot of this is that I was without ‘real’ internet for far too long a time.
Now, it was true that I had flaky 3G (down to H+ or H most often) on my phone, and I could use that as a wireless hot spot, but that wasn’t the fast and, more importantly, unlimited service I’d got used to and ‘needed’.
Obvious things like heavy, undirected browsing were out. Any videos I wanted to see I bookmarked for later. I had only one machine hooked up so I could control how much data I used for things like OS and Antivirus updates. It meant a few things I was used to had to be curtailed, and I whinged about it, but really I had enough internet to talk to my wife (by messenger) who’s in the US, get email, and look up things on the web that I really had to know about.
What surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have, were the things that apparently required an internet connection.
While I could still play disc based games on the XBox 360, the majority of my arcade library was relegated to trial versions. Even ones I’d played recently before the move. There didn’t really seem to be a rhyme or reason to which ones remained the full versions and which were downgraded to trial.
On the tablet, a couple of apps and a game apparently decided they needed to ‘call home’ to verify that I owned them. I’m not sure if they do this every time, but I guess I wouldn’t notice as I always have internet. Except I didn’t now.
I didn’t even try downloading and playing Elite: Dangerous at this point., since I knew it needed an internet connection.
For me the whole railing against the trend towards games needing ‘always on’ internet has been mostly academic. I don’t like the idea, but it usually doesn’t affect me. It’s interesting to have it suddenly affect me, and realise what it really means for a hobby I like to spend a lot of time on.
So, I doubt I’d enjoy doing this ‘forever’, but I survived the time I did have limited internet.
Just don’t ever ask me to give up my 3G as well…
