Geeky. Skip if compgeeky stuff isn’t your thing. Other stuff below.
About once or twice a week, I use several “Internet speed test” sites to check my ISP’s service. I was REALLY disappointed the other day when it was down to about a 4mb/s download speed and latency was an order of magnitude worse than my usual; yeh, even though I already knew everything was loading r e a l l y, r e a l l y s l o w l y, I was still disappointed. Still, with an average d/l speed of 8.36mb/s (and my peak, so far, of 8.92mb/s), I’m not too disappointed with my ISP. Upload speeds are under 0.5mb/s, of course, but I rarely upload multi-gigabyte files, so that’s not a huge bottleneck (I break my uploads for backups into more manageable chunks, and usually do them overnight, anyway).
So, I thought I was having a modem issue. Just didn’t have the money to get a new modem, so I put up with dial-up speeds from cable internet for awhile . I just hooked up the mac I just got from work to my modem, and zoooom, it’s so fast. It’s my stinkin’ computer that’s the problem.
Also, I just found out my job will reimburse me for my internet bill, now that I’ll be required to post news from home occasionally.
Mel, If you have a Windows computer, there are several things you can do to speed your percieved browsing:
1. Use a better browser. My preference is Opera for fast, safe(r) browsing, and with Opera 10 Beta has a “Turbo” feature that really speeds things up for a slower connection, although it does compress images to the point of “yucky” (I’ve been using Opera 10 as my default browser since it was in alpha without any significant issues). Firefox is still better than IE, even IE8, which I sometimes use (although the title bar on m”my” version of IE8 reads, “Internet Exploder 8 doesn’t suck as badly as other Internet Exploders”). Google Chrome is faster than IE, but I have some privacy concerns about it. Heck, Safari for Windows is better than IE.
2. Tweak your Windows settings for more speed. This page and this one and this one have tips and tweaks for that.
3. Empty your browser cache every now and then, as well as clean up Windows junk in general. General Windows performance isasues can affect your browsing speed, since you’re using processor cycles and memory to do your stuff. CCleaner is a free “crap cleaner” that does a pretty good job. Just be sure you DO save before making changes to the Registry with the Registry cleaner (it’s prompt you so no worries there). Find CCleaner here.
4. Use a different OS. Seriously. Download Puppy Linux, burn the ISO (if you’ve not burned ISOs before, read the tutorial at the Puppy website, but use DeepBurner to do the ISO burning. Use the free version). When you’ve done that, reboot with the Puppy C D in your CD tray (you may have to set your BIOS to boot from a CD) and run the whole OS and apps from memory. It’s fast, pretty darned easy and the included Seamonkey Browser is a Mozilla-based browser like Firefox. You WILL have to go into the “Setup” menu option on the Puppy analog of the Start Bar and set up your networking. Easy-Peasy, IMO.