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Important changes at RapidShare.com
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TouchingVirus wrote: »If you take advantage of scheduling downloads during Happy Hours (1am-9am Irish Time) then you can get 300GB/month and don't have to restrict yourself to 1 day downloading, 4 days no-downloading
I tend to download very spur of the moment and I wouldn't leave a laptop on overnight anyway. I may set up a spare PC as a download server.0 -
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jinxleprechaun wrote: »Maybe it's my old age or maybe it's because I've just finished a run of nights from work but I am getting bogged down with all this malarkey. Why could'nt they just leave things as they were - if it ain't broken then why fix it?
I'll be obliged for someone to breakdown the new offering for me - does unused traffic accumulate if unused from day to day or not?? etc etc etc
Tnx in advance to those with more patience
It doesn't work 'day-to-day' anymore, it's more a 'month-to-month' setup. There is only one choice now called 'RapidPro' which costs 99 Rapids for 30 days and gives you 30GB traffic to use in that timeframe. So if you download 3GB today, you'll have 27GB left for the remaining 29 days. If you run out of traffic share before the 30 days is up, you can buy an extra 5GB for 14 Rapids. This can be setup to automatically debit your account in such a scenario, along with a choice to automatically extend your account after 30 days. The question of unused traffic accumulation only becomes relevant when the 30 days are up. Rapidshare themselves state that 'unused traffic volume does not expire', so I'm taking this to mean that it will carry over but I'll believe it when I see it.
With only one choice of package and more control over how and when you use your Rapids, in my opinion this is definitely a better system than before but still requires the use of happy hours to be viable (for moderate to heavy downloaders at least). Thankfully JDownloader makes it easy to schedule downloads and will even shut your system down when it's done.
Of course none of this helps the uploaders so it won't stop the haemorrhage from Rapidshare. My fear is that, while there are many excellent alternatives, there is none that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest the way Rapidshare did and in the future we'll need multiple accounts to get the same level of content options we had with Rapidshare.0 -
iquitalready wrote: »It doesn't work 'day-to-day' anymore, it's more a 'month-to-month' setup. There is only one choice now called 'RapidPro' which costs 99 Rapids for 30 days and gives you 30GB traffic to use in that timeframe. So if you download 3GB today, you'll have 27GB left for the remaining 29 days. If you run out of traffic share before the 30 days is up, you can buy an extra 5GB for 14 Rapids. This can be setup to automatically debit your account in such a scenario, along with a choice to automatically extend your account after 30 days. The question of unused traffic accumulation only becomes relevant when the 30 days are up. Rapidshare themselves state that 'unused traffic volume does not expire', so I'm taking this to mean that it will carry over but I'll believe it when I see it.
With only one choice of package and more control over how and when you use your Rapids, in my opinion this is definitely a better system than before but still requires the use of happy hours to be viable (for moderate to heavy downloaders at least). Thankfully JDownloader makes it easy to schedule downloads and will even shut your system down when it's done.
Of course none of this helps the uploaders so it won't stop the haemorrhage from Rapidshare. My fear is that, while there are many excellent alternatives, there is none that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest the way Rapidshare did and in the future we'll need multiple accounts to get the same level of content options we had with Rapidshare.
Brief Rundown of whats going on at RS
Rapidshare are probably trying to cut their costs which is why they're messing with the old package. Previously every account got 50GB of storage which was secure, as in the files were never deleted no matter when they were last downloaded. You can bet that they have a lot of premium accounts, so that's a lot of storage required. Even if that storage is never used by most premium account holders, they certainly would have a gripe if they tried to upload 50GB and found RS hadn't got enough storage space to give them. These hard drives cost money to buy, replace broken ones, etc etc. Then there was the traffic - everybody gets 5GB/day whether or not they used it. This means at any one time, Rapidshare had to have enough bandwidth to supply all premium members with their 5GB. This cost them money, even though a lot of users probably didn't use 5GB/day. Something needed to be done to cut their costs, and to add flexibility for the smalltime user.
With the new packages it became a situation that if you used more (traffic or storage) then you paid more. If you used less, then you paid less - just like internet providers do with their download caps, pay more to get more. The 'Rapids' thing comes into it make it easier to manage credit cards and stuff. You block-buy Rapids, and these are the payment for RS services. Nobody wanted Rapidshare charging their credit card €4.95 one week, and €9.95 two weeks later. It works for Microsoft (Xbox Live Arcade games and downloadable content costs Microsoft Points, purchased in bulk packages for €x.xx), so why not for RS.
There were a number of flaws with the system. Charging for Rapids was done daily, requiring micromanagement to ensure you're getting the best package for your needs for the following 24 hours. There were big steps between the packages on offer (Traffic 1GB->5GB->20GB->...) and Traffic did not acccumulate. So if you downloaded 1.0001GB, you were bumped up to 5GB, costing you 16 more rapids and you then had until 00:00CET (i.e. the start of the next day in the RS timezone) to use that traffic. There was no way to stop upgrading from package to package, if you lost the run of yourself you could have been up on the max package, costs through the roof per day with no need. There was no low-storage, high-traffic option - traffic and storage was intertwined, and it shouldn't be.
RS knew some of the problems, so they implemented a minimum package that you would revert to 24 hours after your last upgrade, giving you a full day to use the new traffic you paid for and maximum package to stop you going over whatever limit you wanted to set yourself. I suppose most people set it to the 1GB package at the start of the 24 hour period, and the max package to be the 5GB/20GB package - now they were saving on the little download days with enough flexibility on the big download days without going overboard.
This wasn't enough, people were still complaining and worse still for RS, cancelling. I wasn't happy with a 24 hour limit to use my bandwidth, I sent in my own request for a cancellation. There were options open to RS - e.g. a better option would have been to increase traffic 1GB at a time from the base package, at a cost of 4 rapids/GB. Most people can live with losing a few hundred MB of traffic if RS really wanted to reset the traffic allowance every day. But when you're talking 1GB+ it's different. Even better would have been to re-enable that old reliable thing called TrafficShare. With TrafficShare you bought traffic in blocks of 100GB. If, on a certain day, you exceeded your traffic allowance of 5GB (or more, depending on how much you had accumulated over the previous 5 days) the rest of your downloading would reduce your trafficshare traffic rather than stop you downloading altogether. There was no limit for TrafficShare, you bought 1TB of traffic, you had 1TB of traffic forever until you used it all. If they had enabled trafficShare where you bought traffic for rapids then I suspect most people would have set their account to the 1GB package and 'topped up' with TrafficShare on the busy days.
Alas, today they have listened to their users and fixed up their broken system.
Rapids still exist, you still buy 'rapids' with your real money. There is only 1 package. Everybody has it. It costs 99 Rapids every 30 days for 30GB of traffic and 10GB of secure storage. You buy extra secure storage at a cost of 2 Rapids/Month per GB. You buy extra traffic at a cost of 14 rapids for 5GB. This is done automatically by default - every time you run out of traffic, you top up with 5GB, deducting 14 rapids from your total. The traffic you purchase, accumulates. I've done the math and provided you stay under the 10GB of secure storage (you can have any amount of unsecure storage where files are deleted after 60 days without a download), you can have the exact same as your old premium account with this new package for a recession busting price save of €0.25 :P That €0.25 saving gets you an extra 100 or so Rapids, or an extra 35GB/year.
Why the new package is better than the old RS?
Because it's way more flexible. The old RS forced you to have (and thus pay for), 150GB of traffic every 30 days. If you didn't use RS regularly your traffic would accumulate to the 25GB maximum, and every day thereafter you would be wasting 5GB of traffic because you were at your max. This is not an issue anymore.
If 1GB/day does you, then you can have a year of premium RS access for ~360 rapids, or €4.99/year. If you think you can get by less 150GB/month traffic in total then you are still saving. If you want a heavy day of downloading (>25GB in 1 day without Happy Hours) this is now possible; As I mentioned, the Old RS would have required you to top up your account with TrafficShare at a cost of €9.99 for 100GB, or 10c per GB. The top up package of 5GB for 14 rapids works out at only 3.49c per GB max (cheaper if you bulk-buy rapids instead of the 400 rapid price), which is nearly a third of the price and you only buy what you need in 5GB alotments; So if these heavy days of downloading are rare you're not spending money on something you hardly use - you're pay as you go.
In my own situation, I could probably get the exact same service from RS this year as I did last year, but at a cost of €30 instead of €55 for the year; There were a lot of times during the last year where I let the traffic balance accrue to the 25GB max and wasted a few days worth of traffic.
This new package also gives users a bigger incentive to use Happy Hours. Instead of a "Meh, it doesn't matter when I download, I get 5GB every day and that's that" the thought becomes "If I don't need this now, I can just schedule it for later, saving myself 14 rapids" - Sure, it's not much looking at the small picture. But do this 10 times and you've saved €1.40. Do it 100 times and your RS bill drops by €14.iquitalready wrote: »With only one choice of package and more control over how and when you use your Rapids, in my opinion this is definitely a better system than before but still requires the use of happy hours to be viable (for moderate to heavy downloaders at least).
No, it doesn't require the use of happy hours to be viable. See my post above for the maths on it, the new system is cheaper whether you choose to operate the old RS style of 5GB/day traffic or want to go higher in traffic, it's still cheaper.iquitalready wrote: »Of course none of this helps the uploaders so it won't stop the haemorrhage from Rapidshare. My fear is that, while there are many excellent alternatives, there is none that stand head-and-shoulders above the rest the way Rapidshare did and in the future we'll need multiple accounts to get the same level of content options we had with Rapidshare.
What about uploaders?
What about them? :rolleyes: Rapidshare is right, their rewards system did reward people who uploaded copyrighted material with gifts of monetary value - who hasn't seen somebody selling a 30-day or 1 year RS account at a cheaper price than RS? Before file hosts the people who uploaded copyrighted material to public FTPs/pubStros, private FTP sites, curried between Topsites etc didn't do it to make money - sharing is always what it's been about, and psuedo-fame for the groups who release copyright material. This is before you even get into the 'ethics' of "the scene" and how profiting from it is a major no-no. Any uploader who moves away from RS because of the loss of a reward scheme is a d*ck who's forgotten their place :mad:0 -
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I wish their 'rapids' were a little easier on the brain.
I'm never going to be a mathematician. Simple multiplication can boggle me at the best of times. Why can't 1 Rapid = 1GB? That way I would always know what I'm doing. Instead, I have a whole new currency to get my head around.Rapidshare wrote:Each additional 1 GB of storage costs 2 Rapids per 30 days. 5 GB additional traffic volume will be charged with only 14 Rapids.
So... if I'm downloading, if I go over my limit, I get an extra 5GB allocated to me? If I go over that, I get another 5GB given to me?
SO i'd be correct in saying, If I download 40GB in one month (they provide you with the first 30GB "free") I'm down 28rapids?
I could very easily hit, and have before, 200GB in a month. That would now cost me a fortune?
EDIT: To just play on what I said above. I want to Download 200GB in one month. I'm given 30GB at the start of the month at a charge of 99 rapids. For every additional 5GB i use, i'm charged 14 rapids. Thus, 170GB additional traffic will cost me approximately 476 Rapids? (My overall for the month, when including the 99 Rapids they take, is equal to 575 Rapids?)
1,000 Rapids is €9.95. To simplify this, I'll say 1,000 Rapids is €10.
476 Rapids is equal to approximately €4.76
575 Rapids is equal to approximately €5.75
Thus, if you want to download 200GB a month, 12 months in a row, your account will cost you €69? That €69 is an overall cost, though. You won't be required to pay for trafficshare.
200GB x 12 (months) = 2,400GB (2.4TB)
2,400 / 69 (Euro) = 34.7
So... 35c per GB?
If you want to download 200GB per month for a year, at 575 Rapids per month, for a years worth it'll cost you 6,900 Rapids (575 x 12 = 6900).
That does seem to work out alright.
Now of course, downloading 200GB per month is taking it a bit to the extreme, but I'm just using that figure for the sake of it as, though it's extreme, it's also feasible for a lot of people.
I've currently got 3,800 rapids in my account and i'm 'paid up' for another 28 days. What is confusing me, though, is that it's saying I've got 49GB of traffic left. How is that? I haven't downloaded anything since the start of July
There's nothing I want to download, but at the same time, i don't want to waste that in the event it doesn't get carried across.0 -
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