How big is too big?

[daniel.wiltshire at pioneer-usa.com]

What we do on our documents page is to include the file size of each PDF in
the description. That way, people can judge whether or not they would have
the patience to wait for a 10MB download if they're using a slow
connection.

Dan

--- original message --------
Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2006 15:09:26 -0500
From: "Mike Wickham" <mewickham at compuserve.com>
Subject: Re: How big is too big?
To: "Jon Harvey" <JHarvey at cambridgesoft.com>,          "framers"
             <framers at frameusers.com>
Message-ID: <006001c685b7$495a6c90$0b00a8c0 at plecopress>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
             reply-type=original

> We would like to place some of our larger manuals online for download
> but don't know whether the PDFs will be too big. Is there a general
> guideline limit (1MB, 10MB, 25MB?) for the size of a PDF for download?
> Most of  our users are corporate, so we anticipate each will have a
> high-speed connection. However, we certainly can't guarantee all of them
> will be.

I remember the horror of 10MB downloads on dial-up. 25MB downloads were
total misery. I'm guessing that graphics are what make your files large, so
perhaps the solution is to make two versions of the PDF-- one with high-res
graphics, and one with low-res to reduce file size. Then, let the
downloader
choose according to the speed of his connection. You can even set Distiller
to resample the graphics to low-res when creating the PDF. So there's no
requirement to keep two versions of the graphics on disk.

Mike Wickham
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

\
_\  Dan Wiltshire  -  Senior Technical Writer
__\  Pioneer Research Center USA, Inc.
__/  2161 Dividend Drive  -  Columbus, OH 43228
_/  telephone: (614) 777-7273
/  E-Mail: daniel.wiltshire at pioneer-usa.com