Time for the math major to do some arithmetic:
For someone to keep a consistent connection for a month (assumed to be 30 days) at a constant rate of 1KiB/s, this would translate to
(1KiB/s)(60s/m)(60m/h)(24h/d)(30d/month) = 2,592,000KiB = (approx) 2.47GiB
every month. Running Ubuntu 8.10 and closing all open applications aside from System Monitor, I still had the receiving total dance around 1.5 to 2KiB/s. This changes to 10-20KiB/s when I have Pidgin, Swiftweasel, Songbird, Transmission and BOINC open (basically aim, internet, music, torrent [note that I'm not downloading anything when I take this measurement], remote research program).
So, in order to keep a computer on and connected to the internet consistently, I would need to have more than the basic plan, and I would probably break the 40GiB point easily with only limited downloads if I maintained my current usage.
For someone to keep a consistent connection for a month (assumed to be 30 days) at a constant rate of 1KiB/s, this would translate to
(1KiB/s)(60s/m)(60m/h)(24h/d)(30d/month) = 2,592,000KiB = (approx) 2.47GiB
every month. Running Ubuntu 8.10 and closing all open applications aside from System Monitor, I still had the receiving total dance around 1.5 to 2KiB/s. This changes to 10-20KiB/s when I have Pidgin, Swiftweasel, Songbird, Transmission and BOINC open (basically aim, internet, music, torrent [note that I'm not downloading anything when I take this measurement], remote research program).
So, in order to keep a computer on and connected to the internet consistently, I would need to have more than the basic plan, and I would probably break the 40GiB point easily with only limited downloads if I maintained my current usage.