I only post small pics that way, and overall I’d rather just use the clickable link anyway as a courtesy to the website.
I don't believe the image ever resides on the FR server - it just gets dragged to your browser when you either open the FR page with the proper image tag, or click on the link provided. Either way - if the user is going to view the image, it is going to cost the same amount of transfer time.
Someone - feel free to correct me if I'm wrong
Fair enough. One can size the image with a height=nnn command (300-400 usually works well).
I prefer to post the image on FR as a courtesy to my fellow FReepers, but your reasoning makes perfect sense to me. Too early for deep pondering, will ponder more after coffee...