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AnchorDesk

David Morgenstern
Wanna speed up dial-up Web surfing? Here's how

David Morgenstern
Contributing Editor, AnchorDesk
Monday, July 22, 2002
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Back before the Internet bubble burst, industry analysts were predicting that, any day now, we'd all be hooked up with cable or DSL Net connections. But several years later, the reality is that many of you are still getting by with dial-up access. According to your TalkBacks, a commercial service that accelerates the Web for dial-up users might receive a strong welcome--depending on the cost.

In a recent column, my colleague David Coursey reported on start-up Propel, a speed-up service aimed at dial-up Web surfers. While Propel can boost performance by as much as three times, Coursey wondered if potential customers might just step up to broadband instead of paying the service's $5 monthly fee.

"Of course, for $25 a month more than an AOL account, you can graduate all the way to cable modem or DSL broadband Internet access," Coursey wrote. "But [Propel founder] Kirsch is betting that enough people don't want to pay that extra money for DSL or cable Internet, or live in places where broadband isn't available, to, um, propel his company to success."

At the end of that column, we invited readers to answer two questions: First, what type of Internet connection do you use? Second, if you use dial-up, would you fork over the cash for Propel's service? Interestingly, 44 percent of you said you're on dial-up connections, but only 42 percent would pay to speed up their browsers.

Many of you took the opportunity to try out Propel's trial download and reported mostly positive results.

  • George Radojevic lives "way way out in the boonies" and encountered good results with Propel.

    "Even when I used a satellite ISP, sites like Excite, CNN, and even ZDNet, would take up to 20 seconds to load their home page. Now, [with Propel and a dial-up connection] they load in less than 2 seconds. I signed up for a year."

  • William Philpot also raved about the service, scoring it 8 out of 10 for expense vs. return. However, he noticed a glitch with FTP transfers.

    "I love this program for surfing and going back and forth between different Web sites. BUT BEWARE, if you use Propel with an FTP program--it plays hell with it and you'd better turn off the program." READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

  • Lynwood Hines suggested dial-up users look carefully at their needs before signing up for such a service.

    "As others have mentioned, there are better ways to speed up Web surfing over dial-up. The number one way to speed up surfing is to block ads--everything else pales in comparison. Personally, I'm a lot more interested in download times for files and streaming video feeds than Web pages anyway, and this service doesn't help either.

    "The right solution is to go broadband. If you can't get DSL or cable, then you can always get satellite broadband. If you're not willing to pay for real speed,  c'est la vie: you get what you pay for." READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

Meanwhile, quite a number of you offered tips and suggestions for other ways to boost the speed of Web browsing. Among your recommendations:

  • Matt Hair, among others, raved about Proxomitron, free software that checks HTTP header information and then applies user-definable filters before downloading the page.

    "You can do some pretty amazing stuff with the Proxomitron. I formatted ZDNet and a few other sites to fill the space of a 1024-by-768 screen using a little JavaScript, since I hate scrolling.

    "I've trimmed down many sites to display only the stuff that I use. For example, almost all MSN-affiliated sites, such as ESPN, have a rather large border surrounding the top, bottom, and right side of the real content. I made it go bye-bye with the Proxomitron. Oh, and of course, it can get rid of even the most offensive mega ads, if you know how to write some more advanced filters."

  • Joseph Horne wrote that Mozilla 1.0's support for HTTP pipelining can speed up pages for dial-up and broadband users.

    "Mozilla doesn't have this feature enabled from the get-go, however, because a small fraction of Web sites aren't displayed correctly when using pipelining. You have to go into the Preferences (on the edit menu), expand System, and go into HTTP Networking. There, you can check the box for pipelining." READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

  • Bruce Bartlett expressed concerns about Propel's reliance on caching. He empties his cache after closing the browser and holds temp files for only the one-day minimum.

    "Your temp Internet files folder is the first place most nosey companies dig into when they want to snoop on you and see where you've been. And keeping that cache/temp Internet files folder empty reduces the odds of those invisible gifs and Web bugs from tracking your online movements, as well.

    "Also, newer breeds of worms and viruses are entering computers via HTML (Web pages) and HTML-enabled e-mail. They use your cache/temp files to install themselves at your next system startup." READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

Several of you mentioned alternatives to Propel for speeding dial-up access. Dan Andrews likes Artera Turbo, which has focused on the small business and government markets. Daniel Cohen recommends a look at Proxyconn's acceleration service.

David Morgenstern, past editor of eMediaweekly and MacWEEK, is a freelance editor and branding consultant based in San Francisco.

Do you have any other ideas for how to speed up Web surfing? TalkBack to me!

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