While I was downloading 10+ gigabytes of the new Lord of the Rings: Online 10 Day Free Trial, (because LOST doesn’t air for me until tomorrow on abc.com) I wondered how many floppies that would be if this game were released in the early 90’s.
Of course, nobody sane would ever release 10+ gigabytes of data on floppies. In order to visualize the result I consulted my handy tools, google image search and the gimp.
But how many floppies is it?
The Lord of the Rings Download Manager estimates that it’ll take about four hours to download the remaining 8+ Gigabytes.
If I were to install all Seven Thousand, Three-Hundred and Sixty-Seven Floppies, it would take about 491 hours, assuming only 4 minutes per floppy.
Based on the download speed of a 56k modem (which rarely worked as advertised on my phone lines), ten gigabytes would take about Seventeen Days, Eighteen Hours, and Five Minutes to download, assuming the connection is never interrupted by someone picking up the phone to call for pizza.
The number of floppies is probably unrealisticly low since my calculations don’t take into account the floppy headers, and the archive data that interprets each disk in the chain.
Can you imagine if you went into Radio Shackâ„¢ and they had one of those cardboard cutouts with a Seven Thousand, Three-Hundred and Sixty-Seven Floppy Free Trial of Lord of the Rings Online cellotaped into one bundle?! There could only be one set in the store!
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