[blip]

Since I'm home from the summer, I'm stuck using my parents dial-up and the slow speed is really getting to me. I'm wondering if there is anything that I can do to speed it up or generally make it a more pleasant experience.

Right now I'm using Internet Explorer and I'm managing my downloads with Download Accelerator Plus.

Do you think another browser (Mozilla? I've heard it is fast) would speed things up? Also, is there a better download manager in terms of performance/features? Any other tips and tricks?

Thanks.

 

[MagusG]

I am on and have been on dial-up for quite some time. Regardless I am still a power-user and totally wish I had broadband. I have done a few things to speed my connection up a bit. First I went here, and downloaded the appropriate tweak from the downloads section for my operating system. Next, I suggest the Opera web browser. I've only switched recently and this has made the single biggest difference in the feel of things, browsing the web is just much more pleasurable. It is fully customizable, very very fast, has built in pop-up blocker(no more!) and many other features. One of my favorite features is mouse gestures, you can read up on them on the opera website, these little gestures simply ROCK! Finally, I would suggest going and finding the latest drivers for the modem in your parents computer and updating them as well as testing a few different phone numbers for your ISP out an see if you can max out a connection speed with one. Download accelerator plus is fine, I use it as well. Hope this helps.
-Mag

 

[spaceman]

Beg them for broadband

 

[averydonovan]

Quote:

Originally posted by blip Since I'm home from the summer, I'm stuck using my parents dial-up and the slow speed is really getting to me. I'm wondering if there is anything that I can do to speed it up or generally make it a more pleasant experience.

The terms "dial-up" and "pleasant experience" are rarely heard together no matter what you do

Once you've had broadband you can never go back.

Quote:

Right now I'm using Internet Explorer and I'm managing my downloads with Download Accelerator Plus. Do you think another browser (Mozilla? I've heard it is fast) would speed things up? Also, is there a better download manager in terms of performance/features? Any other tips and tricks?

Mozilla is faster than IE on broadband connections but I doubt you'll notice much difference on dial-up, at least in my experience. As MagusG suggested Opera might be worth a try and modem speed tweaks can help. I liked Opera when I was stuck using a Pentium 133 with 64MB of RAM running Windows 2000 at my first job since it doesn't hog system resources and it made the most out of their 128Kbps SDSL connection.

 

[blip]

Thanks for the advice Magus... I tried the dial-up tweak you suggested and it netted me an extra .3-.5 kbps on dowloads.... Not bad for a registry tweak at all!

I may have to switch over to Opera. I use it on my school system (which unfortunately doesn't have a modem so I'm forced to either use the family system or my troglodite of a laptop (500 mhz eek!)) and really love it for broadband because of the sheer number of windows etc. that it can handle open at one time... Great for multitasking! I might have to try it on the home system to check the speed.


Anyone have any other tips? I just discovered www.thinnerism.com so I'm suffering through downloading mp3s on a dial-up....

 

[blip]

Amen Donovan... Amen. While I was at school I forgot that on dial-ups doing things like surfing in three windows while downloading two multithreaded files (i.e. multiple connection downloads or whatever the technical term for it is) just doesn't work!

 

[MagusG]

Did you update the modem drivers and play around with phone numbers? sometimes that can yeild good results. What speed are you connecting at? I would seriously suggest opera though. That program made the single biggest difference in my web browsing experience on dialup, plus Mouse Gestures kick ass.
-Mag

 

[blip]

Tried the phone numbers... no luck. I haven't tried the drivers yet.

I'm connecting at 48,000... not too shabby, but still majorly sucky.

 

[Dusty Chalk]

A couple of thoughts:

I was having trouble every time it rained, so we called the serviceman out. It dried up by the time he got here, but he still managed to fix the problem (A+ to the guy!). He said that the connection I was at "at the box" (meaning the one outside that all the neighborhood connect to) had a lot of "faults" on it "...so I put you on a better one". I have not been able to connect at less than 50.6kbps since then. (Alright, there was that one time...)

Secondly:

HTTrack. Download the entire site, then browse it locally. It's been a sanity saver.