Remember all those "web accelerators" from the days of dial-up internet which basically acted like a filter and/or cached more to appear as if you were doing things faster on the web? Maybe you do.
Google had their own version of it called the Google Web Accelerator and have officially killed it.
Yes, I did try one several accelerator-style products during the old days of dial-up, and they were all terrible. Most of them slowed down your computer to a crawl which actually made your browsing slower.
In the modern day of broadband there is no need for accelerators anymore. And if you’re using dial-up I still wouldn’t use one.
The way to browse faster today is the same way you browsed faster back then:
- Try not to use plugins or add-ons in your browser. Keep it minimal or alternatively don’t use any.
- Use an email client instead of web-based mail and download "headers only" for each mail received.
- Use alternative lightweight instant messengers that don’t load ads.
- Avoid sites that make extensive use of Flash.
- Use RSS to get content for web sites.
- Use things on the internet that require minimalist bandwidth (like IRC).
If you have "slow broadband", what do you do to save bandwidth?
“The way to browse faster today is the same way you browsed faster back then:” get a better connection.
Actually, 2 great plugins for Firefox that help are the NoScript and NoFlash ones. Not only are you more protected while surfing, you don’t have to waste download bandwidth on stuff you don’t want to see.
One thing that’s easy to do to speed up your connection, is to bypass the DNS when ever you can. On those sites you visit often, ping them to get their IP address, then modify your bookmark to use their direct IP address instead of the URL.
I would add using firefox and and Ad Block Plus. This prevents those resource hog ads from even showing up. Page loads faster!
I’ve used OnSpeed in the past on a slow dial-up connection, and that definitely helped. It did not slow down the PC noticeably.
The product works by compressing web-pages and particularly images. These are not tricks which you can perform in the browser – they have to happen before being sent to the modem.
Of course one can disable images entirely, but having a low res version is often useful.