rapid news and calculations
Posted by cozmikangel on June 29 2010 02:32:56
Here's the bottom line on the calculations, then I'll write out how I got to these figures.
The current price for a 1 year account is about $75 (euros converted to dollars). With the new pricing structure, the new price of a "rapid medium" account would be about $110 per year (31 cents per day), which is a 50% price increase. But when you consider that you only get 5 GB download traffic per day on a "rapid medium" account, when you used to get 25 GB download traffic per day, you're definitely NOT getting what you used to pay for!
If you want to get a "rapid big" account, which gives you 20 GB download traffic per day, you'll be closer to what you used to get with the 25 GB download traffic per day. But guess what that price comes out to? Around $440 per year ($1.21 per day), which is a price increase of 475% !!!! That's just downright ridiculous!
What about those of us who have already paid for their premium account? They say you will get 20 "rapids" for each paid day you have left. For example, I have 232 paid days left on my account. That gives me 4,640 rapids, which will convert to about $70. That $70 WILL actually get me 232 days of a "rapid medium" plan but only 59 days of a "rapid big" plan. That's all I get for my 232 days paid? Like I said, clearly we are getting screwed big-time.
Another thing they're saying that is pretty misleading is that you can switch your plan daily to fit your needs. But each plan has a different level of storage available. So if you are currently using about 15GB of storage & you've downloaded only 1 GB today, could you use the "rapid small" plan today since it allows 1 GB download traffic? No, because the "rapid small" plan only allows 10 GB storage. What would they do with the other 5 GB of files that you have? Also, the "rapid small" account does not allow folder management. So what would happen to all your folders if you switched from a "rapid medium" to a "rapid small"? The only thing you can really do is try to estimate how much storage & download traffic you need & buy the plan that fits that & just keep it that way. I don't see how it would work to switch your plan daily, at least if you're storing files.
If anyone is still reading & still interested in the math, here's how I got these numbers (and my spreadsheet is attached if anyone wants to see it).
400 rapids = 4.99 euros = $6.18 dollars (at the current exchange rate). That's about 0.0125 euros per rapid and 0.0155 dollars per rapid.
A rapid small plan is 4 rapids per day, which is about 6 cents per day.
A rapid medium plan is 20 rapids per day, which is about 31 cents per day, which is about $110 per year.
A rapid big plan, the closest to what we have been used to, is 78 rapids per day, which is about $1.21 per day, which is about $440 per year. When I last paid for my 1 year account a few months ago, it was $76.70!
The numbers I used to convert my current plan to the new plan:
I have 232 days left on my account & I'll get 20 rapids per day for it, which is 4,640 rapids. At 0.0155 per rapid, that's a credit of about $70. That will buy me 232 days of a rapid medium account at 31 cents per day, which is the same number of days I had before. BUT a rapid medium account only comes with 5 GB download traffic per day, which sucks when I used to get 25 GB per day. Closer to what I originally signed up for is the rapid big account with 20 GB per day, but my $70 credit will only buy me 59 days of a rapid big account at $1.21 per day.
Now the price per rapid does go down a little if you purchase more rapids at a time. But I used the price per rapid that you will get with buying 400 rapids at a time, which is the lowest number of rapids you can buy in a purchase, so it is a little higher than buying more rapids with each purchase. But the overall difference in my calculations was pretty negligible so I just used the price per rapid you'll get for purchasing 400 rapids.