On the User Control Panel, “Edit Options” page, there’s a menu that lets you set the default number of posts that show up on a single SDMB. The default is apparently 50, but that often seems to involve downloading 200K plus page images -which is slow. OTOH, setting the posts per page to 5, involves a lot of reloading of the SDMB logo, and icons etc. I’ve reset my page length to 30 posts, which works OK, but I’m wondering if anyone’s tried all the options and determined the optimum setting?
In terms of minimizing the bandwidth used, pagination is bad. Whether you download one post at a time or all of them, you’re grabbing the same amount of post images/text. The only thing that changes is the number of times you download the page top, and the fewer times you do that, the less bandwidth you use.
50 seems to work pretty well for me.
Download all that you would read in one session, and no more. 
Generally, I find 50 to be a good compromise.
Not necessarily. I’m a participant in the Infamous Diablo Thread, for instance. It’s currently at over 2500 posts. If there were no pagination at all, then every time I called up that thread, I’d be calling up all 2500 of them. As it is, though, when I load that thread, I’m mostly just interested in the most recent discussion in it, so I just bring up the last page (or occasionally the last two pages, if it jumped a page since I last read it). So I only have to load between, say, 10 posts and 60 posts.
Of course, there’s some optimum amount in there, but there are too many factors for me to be sure what it is. And to complicate things further, most threads aren’t fifty page monsters. Offhand, I’d say that 50 seems like it’s probably close to right, but I can’t back that up.
I usually click on the show posts since last visit button. On a long thread, that’ll bring up ~200K of text (at 50 posts per page). Setting the page length back to 30 posts cuts that back to around 150K.
How’d you guys get 50? I seem to be limited to 40 per my options panel.
The default is fifty, Chairman so if you want that, set it to default, otherwise set it to something else.