That's a good size, I just wish the max kbs were raised too, 19.5 kb is too small. How about at least 50kb?
The initial concern to my knowledge was "The cost of bandwidth", a page usually displays the average of 10 posts, each post comprises of:
- Username/Title/Avatar
- Post Content
- Signature
Each of those things has a defined limit (PostUsername/Title character limitations are set for database constraints), in the case of images the limitation is the stored value as an image in the sciforums avatar library and not the transmitted value (Gzip/Deflate is used by the server) meaning it compresses such things at runtime to send in the least amount of data-transfer between server and client.
It would be possible to crank up the kb a little due to the Gzip usage, but it's really a question of how much room there is for data storage on the server.
It's obviously something legitimate to look at since most aren't now on a 56kb modem, however larger sizes will effect phone users if there isn't a specific skin tailored to them.