a little education for those who can't seem to grasp the concept that some of us actually really use the internet for other things than what they would normally associate usage with. however i suppose i can't really blame them if that is the only exposure they have been exposed to and automatically go ZOMG series, movies, games and applications when confronted with a lot of bandwidth or can't seem to realize how some other people are using more than what they would consider normal. clearly most or and some other people just don't know what else is out there imho...
...to the usage.
steam - anything from 500 meg up to 10 gig and even more per game title legally bought.
ign - patches, demos, previews and clips of mostly games. also can get quite huge thinking of nowadays demos weighing in at least 1gig+. not to forget HD streams and so on from them.
direct 2 drive - mostly same idea as steam. buy a game and download it directly, aslo anything from 500 meg up to 10 gig.
beta testing of games - yep online testing of coming mmos and even some other non mmo developers does this. anything from 2 to 5+ gig a shot. then there will also be the constant patches and content being added to the beta testing.
test clients (mmo) - some of us likes to play around on the test clients of mmos and that too can get a lot to download at times. the test client which normally equals the non-test client (5+ gig) and as well as the patches and content being added and removed on a more than normal basis.
msdn/technet training - anything from 50-250meg a video can get quite a lot when you go though a few courses being presented.
msdn software - same as with beta/test clients if you go for application testing and excluding the released applications. normally from 1-3+ gigs. for releases software, well the normal sizes it would be like around 3 gig for windows 7.
vpn to work - just add a normal day of network traffic, documents you might work on and everything else that needs to be seen and worked on to complete an 8 hour day of work or less. also throw in some server administration and maybe some reporting on the side too, not to mention if you have to pull and push large files over the vpn.
HD streams via xbox - it starts at 2 gig a flick, goes up to 5/6 gig for proper HD flick via xlive. this does not include the total pay tv series you can get via sky i think. there is also the getting games with their direct 2 console thing. slap any released xbox game onto that which easily weighs in at around 7 gigs.
video conferencing - anyone who have done a bit of proper video conferencing know that it takes a lot of content in size.
upload of work - try doing some digital painting and design for someone in a foreign country, trust me uploading each set of raws can get really huge.
...and this is not even all of the things one could do to really use your bandwidth. bit tiresome of when some go ZOMG you must be pirate, how else can you use 50-150 gig a month ? or lol the isp geez these ****ers must only be into pirating since they decided they actually want to use our product and not just go some oom and tannie via facebook.
Update to list
Voicy -
game development videos - 60-100mb each
Pilgrim -
Online stores that sell digital copies, eg Amazon, Audible, iTunes (need international account for that, but possible) etc.
MMO with VOIP - over 3 gigs for w/e
warchylde -
Citrix - RDP tool when working from home
SIP/AIX (VOIP) - VOIP connectivity to Office PBX (this can be quite a hog)
Linux Distros
Linux Distro updates everytime a VM is reinstalled (between 450GMB and 1.5GB depending on what's installed)
Uploading of VM's to a datacentre.
Microsoft updates for test servers (no indication of amount.)
