[STRML]

Your comment is mostly on point, but the download speeds are way off. By the time Flash was really getting big, everyone was on 56k, (rarely) ISDN, or ~1mbps broadband of one type or another. But even with 56k, you're getting 5kBps. So a 45-100kB download was 20sec at most, and 500kB was about 2 minutes.

That said vector graphics and extreme sound compression was just how shit got done. In those days gaming and entertainment online was all about CD deployment, extreme delta patching, low bit rate audio (Teamspeak et al) and vector graphics when possible.

I miss those days. On top of it not yet being spoiled by billion dollar businesses, the extreme constraints meant that creative minds could excel far above and beyond corporate types. And that's why the internet had the reputation it did. The ones who were making waves were individuals and small development houses that were founder-driven. It's nothing like today.

[dspillett]

> By the time Flash was really getting big, everyone was on 56k, (rarely) ISDN, or ~1mbps broadband of one type or another.

From my memory¹ the big flash days in terms of my interaction with stuff created with it, started as I was upgrading from 36k6 to 56k at home (though I had faster access at University sites) and ended around the time I bumped up from 512kbit to 2mbit downstream.

*> But even with 56k, you're getting 5kBps.

Usually less. It was rare to connect faster than 45k on most lines, 42k on some.

Of course once upgraded (first from ~56k modem to 512kbit ADSL), and before upgrading at home but using faster connections at uni/work, there were other issues: often the sites we were getting the flash content from would not deliver nearly as fast as the new line could receive²³ so a ½Mbyte+ flash app could still take a noticeable time to arrive.

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[1] UK here, landline internet tech rollout progress varied a lot between territories

[2] again, UK: some other-end bandwidth issues (and latency issues) might have been experienced differently where you are due to differences in [inter]national peering arrangements

[3] or if they did, there was enough latency to mask a chunk of the bandwidth benefit

[hadlock]

I remember getting 3.5-4.5kBps. Usually on the lower end of that scale. 5 was an exceptionally lucky day.