Browser compatability with internet explorer

So we all read the usual stuff about working with IE 6 & 7
Making every website backwards compatible is almost worth dying for to some web developers. I’m not one of them, but I do understand their point of view.

However during all the discussions I read until now on how to make your website degrade nicely to a 10 year old browser, never once have I seen someone mentioning optimizing the web graphics to a 56kbps dialup modem, or export all flash animations to Flash player 5, with Action Script 1.0.

Still it is the same thing is it not?
It is only fair to assume those users will also have old versions of pretty much any other web related software.

Let’s say for example that the visitors came from a developing country.
Well that 350kb billboard graphic your designer made will take 45min to download on average dialup speed. In such a scenario all the time and money spend making your website IE6/7 compatible is wasted because the visitor won’t wait for your page to load.

So bottom line as far as I am concerned if you are going to do one thing backwards compatible then do it right and make every part compatible.