Minimising Iridium Airtime Costs

[riddon]

I have an Iridium phone on board which I use for emails when out of reach of wifi / mobile phone etc. I have always tried to eliminate un-needed connections when using it such as automatic updates for software etc. I used to use it on a windows machine but have just invested in a macbook and am looking for a way to check that nothing else will be using the Iridium connection when I am emailing. Any tips or software which might help me track down unwanted connections?

Richard.

[conachair]

Iridium & Inmarsat Satellite Phones with Backup & Support | MailASail do a service where they compress emails, not free but did seem to work well, i tried a friends account offshore. great place to get free gribs & text forecasts via email as well.
no use to you but maybe to others - NetLimiter - The Ultimate Bandwidth Shaper do a great little program which shows download and upload speeds, and you can limit individual program speeds or stop them accessing the net altogether. Maybe similar prog for mac somewhere?

[riddon]

I have used netlimiter before on PC. Just did a search for mac and found Little Snitch which looks like it should do what I need.

Little Snitch

Thanks.

Richard.

[Cormorant]

Also check to see what the "billing increment" is from your airtime provider. It makes a big difference in overall costs, depending on whether you pay for, say, a 2:00 minute call after using the phone for 1:10. If you can find a 20- or 10-second billing increment, it will save you much money, esp. if many of your calls are short ones for checking email, where the 1-59 seconds of "extra" time make up a substantial percentage of the call time.