Unlimited

adjective

1. not limited; unrestricted; unconfined
2. boundless; infinite; vast
3. without any qualification, or exception

Home unlimited internet access is limited. Try uploading at maximum speeds for a while and you will find your access severely throttled. I should know because I knew for a fact that Comcast did that, as I'm sure Time Warner did for a while. What they do now is slow the internet down so its near unbearable for anything else after a while.

Cell phone data plans aren't unlimited, even if they were advertised as so. Well at least now the carriers have done away with unlimited data plans and are starting to charge more reasonable fees for tiered plans.

And really with the comparatively slow speeds of our "high speed" internet access we can't compare with many other countries in speed or affordability so reach a relatively low cap every month in how many movies we can stream or pictures we can upload.

Ooma calling isn't unlimited. At first the limit was 3,000 minutes per month, but has recently went up to 5,000 minutes per month. In case you're wondering that comes out to about 2 weeks of straight talking.

My latest pickle has to do with my Pro Phanfare account with unlimited storage. Turns out I've hit the limit not once, but twice so far this year. The first time it was because I hit a 50 GB upload limit back in May while I was in Asia. I'm sure that I wasn't the typical customer who only takes snapshots on vacation with their pocket cams (but hey, most of my shots in Asia this year was with my pocket camera).

At that time they told me they had just raised the limit to 100 GB upload which I just hit yesterday while uploading pictures from this past week's touristy romp around So. Cal with friends.

I fit the profile of 1% of their customers I'm told, and my current storage costs them about $600 per year not including any bandwidth usage since they use Amazon's S3 storage service. Click here to see their rates.

My advice. Read the fine print - there's always fine print. They re-define what unlimited is, and typically state that no matter what, they can change what 'unlimited' means at any time without notice.

Update on 2011-02-08 07:25 by Mike Mu

Mozy no longer unlimited.

I just got an email notice from Bubbleshare that they will no longer be available. For those of you that don't know, Bubbleshare was a photosharing website with a lot of innovative features. Unfortunately they couldn't figure out a way to make money.

Back in 2000 a photo site (I believe was called photopoint) where I uploaded all my photos to also went bankrupt. Without warning all photos were no longer accessible, and the site was shut down. My photos were gone in cyberspace forever.

Don't let that happen to you. Make backups, upload to several photo sites, save on DVD, and store your most important photos/files on archival media, print them out and store them somewhere safe!

Bubbleshare had the decency to send out this email to warn all users to download all their photos:

"Dear Bubbleshare member –

As of November 15, 2009, Bubbleshare.com will no longer be available and all links to all albums and photos will cease to function (including existing links within emails, blogs, etc). To access your photos in the future you will need to download your photos prior to November 15, 2009.

To save your images to your desktop, simply click the "Download Album" link next to your albums and double click on original photos. Your photos will then be saved to your desktop.

Again, all photos and albums must be removed prior to November 15, 2009. Effective immediately, you will no longer be able to upload any new photos or albums.

We apologize for the inconvenience. It was our pleasure to assist you with your photo sharing needs.
Thank you.

Sincerely,
The Bubbleshare Team"