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Since this question pops up from time to time, some clarification on the issue of RSS feeds and bandwidth usage.
There are actually two methods implemented in many aggregators that help conserver bandwidth:
conditional get
skiphours
The first one is just the standard HTTP conditional get you would expect: watch out for Last-Modified or ETag headers in the RSS feed response and send them in with If-Modified-Since or If-No-Match headers on polling. If no changes are detected, you get a no-change-response.
The second one is a structure in the RSS feed that is filled with the hours (GMT) where your blog doesn't have any postings. The aggregator shouldn't try to poll at all in those hours, as it is highly unlikely that there will be something new. Usually these are the sleeping hours (if the author has something like a regular sleeping habit  ).
So there are solutions against bandwidth overusage and they should be applied by aggregator writers. Most good aggregators already do. Hey, even the Python Desktop Server does .
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