I'd turned OFF auto-check for updates on Nov 3rd because MB'd been downloading complete install files (in error) and when I manually checked just now, Nov 5th, and 58.39mb was downloaded.
This indicates an inability to incrementally update the dbs if we wait "too long" between updates, i.e. from 3151 to 3178 and therefore "everything" is downloaded. (It must be "everything" because a complete install file is only 75mb.)
So I'm turning ON auto-check for updates, run every 6 hours, in the hope that this will give smaller, incremental, updates (unless there's another screw up which always downloads full dbs.)
A few days should tell.
But it would be nice to know what the limit is. Given that the option to check for updates allows me to set a schedule of 14 days, I'd expect incrementals for that period.
Another question is - if there's a change of just 1 line/row/??? in a db, is just that 1 line/row/??? downloaded to update the db or is the entire db downloaded? If the latter, it's not a true incremental update, it's a "replace the entire db" update. This was a problem with EMSI a few years ago, they did eventually issue true incrementals but it took about 2.5 years between my request and actual implementation.