Jakob Nielsen’s site on web usability has a page entitled ‘Why This Site Has Almost No Graphics’ which says, quote –
Download times rule the Web, and since most users have access speeds on the order of 28.8 kbps, Web pages can be no more than 3 KB if they are to download in one second which is the required response time for hypertext navigation.
The link is from 1997. The site is so horribly ugly I can hardly bear to look at it, and 28.8 kbps and 1 second page load? Really? In 2005? I don’t think so. So here’s a message to Jakob web guru – one of the most important things you can do to make your site usable is to keep it updated and current.