At the risk of stepping on some toes I feel compelled to ask why some members feel it necessary to have such long signatures! Some of these things, especially the ones with pictures, take too long to load . You spend your time waiting on a picture of a car to load that you have seen a hundred times already!! Does anybody really care that you've painted your wiper arms or "future upgrades". IMHO the signature should list your current stable, not tell your life story!! Seems a terrible waste of resources to me.

Get DSL, it's this fast, BANG!
Adam

__________________
Current Stable:
01 ML55 AMG
92 500E (a few mods)
87 300E (lots of mods)
00 Chevy 3500HD Diesel Box Truck
68 18' Donzi Marine
06 GT i-Drive7 1.0 Mountain Bike (with GPS!)

PREVIOUSLY OWNED:83 300SD, 87 420SEL, 88 420SEL, 90 420SEL, 86 560SEL, 86 190E 2.3-16V AMG, 94 E320

I agree with Stephen. This is not just a download issue, it also makes the postings looking childish, but that is only my opinion (so no flaming please). If one visits another German car site (guess which one? ), you see all these type of signitures.

DSL is not availavle in any place in the USA. I would love to get it but no ISP in my area offers it. ISDN is the fastest I can get and I have to pay the phone companies big $ just to have ISDN service, plus ISP for ISDN Internet service.

If one really wants to show the pics and mods (present or future) to a car, one can easily posts it in a posting and then use the URL in the sig.

Speed is not the only point here. Server waste and the simple fact that if I wanted to see these cars over and over I'd ask you to send me a photo!:p

HUM, I don't see the problem if its not download speed. Maybe your screen size is set too big for your monitor.

When I'm at home with a broken car and a dial up, the only picture I want to see is how to fix my car.

The Captain's right....

Server space is wasted with thousands of picutres of the same car.

Speed of the download is an issue for those of us who live in the boonies and have to rely on 28.8K dial-up. I have a T1 connection at work, but my car repairs take place at home!

Personally, the pictures of everyone's cars are nice, but not over and over and over........ Maybe we should suggest a little server space to display a gallery of our vehicles. Otherwise there should be a limit to the size and number of pics allowed in the signature line.

I wonder what webmaster Bill would have to say on this matter?

This topic, while not visited here is actually pretty old and predates the internet and its predecessor the UUNet and goes back to the dawn of computer based communications in the BBS era. For those of you who are newbies, that implies a time frame of about ~1986.

A few points:

Regarding memory space, a signature adds notable space only one time which is when you add it to your profile. The remainder of times the information is linked. Or at least it probably is linked...

If you increase the amount of memory devoted to caching sites sufficiently in your browser, any recurrent images you see will reside on your hard drive after your browser has downloaded them once. This will minimize loading time thereafter. Actually there is more to this topic but I’m not going any further into it at this point.

Second, a point of etiquette was reached a long time ago. In fact so long ago almost no one remembers it because they probably never saw it. The point of etiquette is suggested to keep your signature so that it is shorter than your average post.

Third while DSL and even ISDN aren’t available everywhere, and while ISDN absolutely sucks in a return for the cost compared to DSL there is a fairly new service that is both competitive with DSL cost and will give you incoming speed at about 384K (which is faster than basic DSL, at least for now). It is also routable – meaning you can use it for a number of computers in your household/office at the same time. This is satellite based DSL, offered by the DirecTV folks. For more info see this site:
http://directv.com/DTVAPP/imagine/InternetAccess.jsp

In fact, as an aside, the direcPC folks mentioned above, probably represent the next step in the future of communications. Satellite TV is actually less expensive than broadband, in most areas anyway, as is satellite based internet access.

Next, were I to comment on the topic of signatures, which I of course wouldn’t do, I would agree with the Cap’n even though I have a mildly lengthy signature. It is at least not as long as my typical post (which I’m sure everyone is very happy for ) and I only include my MBs in the stable, because this is a MB site.

This all being said, I would ask that the contents of the signature change from time to time only to avoid mental burn-in. I don’t mind seeing folks past and wanna do’s if/and when they have the $$$ but seeing it for ever is BORING. With that in mind I have put a new “do” to mine. I hope some of the signatory over exuberant amongst us will follow suit.

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...Tracy

'00 ML320 "Casper"
'92 400E "Stella"

I have dialup and a 56K modem, and I've never been bothered by signature length (including photos). My system is an 800 mhz Dell with 128 mb of ram; not the latest thing but will run plenty of new programs.

If complaints are arising; I have some solutions.

1. Ditch the 2400 baud modems, people. It ain't 1987 anymore.

2. Most of the pics take only a couple seconds to load anyway; and lots of them are cached on mine. What's the rush? Chill out.

3. Get used to the proliferation of pics on sites like these, thanks to the proliferation of DSL and cable internet.

4. Move to Seattle. The climate is pretty decent; it doesn't rain as much as everyone believes, and there are good Benz shops here. And cars don't rust here, unlike the Midwest.

-Sam

I have a better solution, re-read loubapache's reply!! It's the same principle as loud music, you have every right to listen to it, but you don't have the right to make ME listen to it with you. I think we should put ALL pics in URLs and let the reader decide whether to open them or not! What's to stop someone from attaching a full frontal picture of Roseanne?? You could choose not to open the post from then on, but the damage would already have been done!! As far as signatures go, the long ones are a good example of insecurity and childlishness. Like the screaming kid in Wal-Mart or the spoiled kid jumping up and down saying "Look at me, look at me!!!".

I'm going to chime in here sinc eI have probably one of the logest signatures.

1. My signature picture is hosted on my own web space, it does not take up any mercedesshop webspace.

2. I like listing what I have done to my car for all to see.

3. I do like my stereo loud enough for people to hear it if I want them to.

4. my signature to me is like well a footprint. I like ot leave my mark wherever I post.

5. I agree that maybe it does get outof hand when there are large pictures. I have made mine a small banner, and you can't really see my car in it.

other than that, if you guys request it, I'll trim it down but I prefer not to as I like it as it is.

Alon

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'92 300CE - Sold
2004 C240 - 744 - C7 Wheels - Android Radio
2002 C320 - 816 - Sport Wagon

Well, the site does have a 51K limit on pics. That keeps the size of sig pics down.

And as far as nude pictures of Roseanne, that's why this site is moderated.


Now that's just harsh. Some people are proud of their machines, and I respect that. Childish? Insecure? Ummm...no.

(for example) If someone has a 560SEL with tinted windows and 17 inch AMG monoblocks and a nice tasteful bodykit and some other cosmetic upgrades, and displays it, seeing that car in some posts wouldn't bother me at all.

To all members with tasteful sig pics with nice MBs: Keep them; I like them, and I'm going to borrow a digi-cam and get one of the 380SE one of these days.

-Sam

I've noticed this too...

BUT have you noticed how the posts changed lately? In each thread, it only shows a person's signature the 1st time they post in that thread. SO there is never more than 1 signature per person in the thread.

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2006 E350 w/ 155k miles (Daily Driver)

Previous:
1993 300E 3.2L Sedan w/ close to about 300k miles
2003 E500 Brilliant Silver (Had 217k miles when totalled!)
1989 300E with 289,000 miles (had for <1 yr while in HI)
03 CLK 500 cabrio (Mom's)
2006 C230k (Dad's)
1999 S420 (Mom's/Dad's)
2000 C230k Sport sedans
2001 CLK320 Cabrio (Mom's)
1995 C280 My First Mercedes-Benz... (155k miles. EXCEPTIONAL AUTOMOBILE. Was Very hard to let go of!)

THEN PUT THE PIC IN A URL!! and be proud of it there!!

Well, looks like I'm okay, as (other than this post) I tend to be VERY long winded...

I personally don't car as long as the pic fits within my old-fashioned 800 pixel wide screen resolution.

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John Shellenberg
1998 C230 "Black Betty" 240K

http://img31.exs.cx/img31/4050/tophat6.gif