Last week's article on "The World Wide Wait" and how to speed up your Web browser generated a large email "postbag". Here is a cross section of messages, from experts and beginners alike, including more gripes and handy tips
. CACHE: I enjoyed your article in yesterday's Irish Times. I find that an effective way to speed up Netscape is to set the disk cache to zero and make the memory cache as large as possible. Cuts out all those endless disk accesses!
- David Doff (ddoff.tcd.ie) -
. TRASH: [With] Windows 95, the user can go into the Find-Files option under the Start button and have the computer organise the files under icons in date order. You can then dump the files into the recycle bin and then delete. This gets rid of all of the graphics and files (e.g. WAV files) which accumulate as you surf the Web. This can remove a lot ofjunk from the hard drive and free up the drive and thus your speed.
- Patrick Teeling aka Mad Cat (teeling.airmail.net)
. CABLE: I enjoyed your article on the World Wide Wait. During the peak times it is very hard for me to bring up my home page which is The Irish Times. Cable modems have just started to come out in my area [of North America] which I am seriously thinking of getting, "The Wave" they are calling it. I am by no means an Internet junkie - having three young children it doesn't give me much time to surf. I can see The Wave being very beneficial for me. My question is, do you think wires are the future of the Internet?
Sean Flynn
(flynntwo.worldchat.com)
. START PAGES: Many thanks for your very useful tips on browsing. It reminded me to make a start page with my habitual links. They work beautifully for all except The Irish Times. . . which comes up with the message "Can't open perl script `d:www': No such file or directory".
As I posted the address (http://www.irish-times.com/cgi-bin/today.plx/) straight from my favourites, I'm mystified. Any ideas? As I seem to recall the same problem when I put a link from my Web page (and had to settle for irish-times.com).
- Philip Casey
- (phcasey.iol.ie)
Grrr, the address is definitely correct, hut strange things happen uhen you address the "cgi-bin". an area of the web server which can seem almost as mysterious as the Third Secret of Fatima.
. PRICES: I was forced into personally using a computer for the first time about one year ago; I am 60 years old. Because I needed a PC to earn my living, had to plunge in head first without the benefit of any training. I just had to muddle my way through and have very little time to "read up". Hence I find your articles in The Irish Times very helpful.
I'm not sure if you answer queries; if not perhaps you could make an exception:
1. Your "item 2" on modems makes a reference to Telecom Eireann's tariff structure. I, like a number of friends and business colleagues, have assumed that: (a) the cost of sending an email to anywhere in Ireland or in the world, is the same as making a local telephone call in Dublin; (b) the cost of spending time on the Web is also the same as in making a local call;
(c) How are the charges computed by Telecom and shown in a "detailed" Telecom account? Presumably under "Local Calls" but what number would be shown in relation to where the call was made?
2. Could you elaborate on downloading an article from the Web to view off line later. Do I `Save As' and create a Download folder?
3. Finally (and I have tried Indigo's help desk twice without success): I receive email messages from overseas which when I try to read them, I have to either use the horizontal scroll bar or better still, I click on "Word Wrap". Fine, however when I print out the message, only a quarter of it prints; in other words the "Word Wrap" does not relate to the printer.
- Liam (lranchi.indigo.ie)
Telecom Eireann charges you the same for each minute you are online to your Internet service provider or ISP (in this case Indigo) as it would cost to carry on a telephone conversation. There's no difference - but in one three-minute call you could sendnot just one email but a dozen reasonably short email messages. Write them all while you are off line, then connect to your ISP and send them together, on one phone call.
To download an article, particularly a long one, use the "Save as" option and making a "down loads" folder is a good idea too. Then read the pages off line at your leisure; you can always move them to mare specific folders afterwards.
As for the printing problem, we haven't experienced it ourselves. Perhaps readers who have done so could contact Liam directly.
. FRAMES: I am what might be called an ex-pat living in LA working in the multimedia and animation industries. We use Gateway 2000s running at 250 Mhz, pretty nice stuff. But I find that my Sega Saturn Net Link system at home displays (non frames) pages faster. Granted I can't copy any cool JPEGs or code but it's handy for viewing the Irish-Times. cam/
It's such a pity that in Ireland you have to pay for time on the Net. It kind of defeats the purpose of the Internet right from the get-go. Maybe Telecom Eireann could set up some ISPs that are truly designed for Net use i.e. free? They should only charge a monthly/yearly rate. I only spend about $7 per month for Net access yet I'm connected about 90 hours a month.
Patrick D'Arcy
(pdarcy.concentric.net)
. SCRIPTS: Your mention of the AppleScript for the Mac, referred to as "CacheBeGone" in the article, caught my eye. It was with considerable time and effort that I eventually discovered that the proper title is CacheBGone... The effect of clearing out the Netscape cache was quite dramatic, and increased the speed greatly. Thank you for drawing it to my attention.
- Seoirse Bodley
(100703.1112.compuserve.com)
Apologies to anybody else for that glitch.
. ISPs: Find out from Ireland On-Line and publish why they are not part of the Irish Internet Exchange. For them to join would be in the interest of their customers and in the interest of all Internet users in Ireland so should be in Ireland On-Line's medium to long term interest.
Find out how many modems per user and how many sites in which modems are located. For if an ISP gives an 1850 number for dial-tip and has centralised its modems their effectiveness is much greater. Watch our for a Dublin-centric bias in your report. Some ISPs treat their country cousins much better than others. Like does the ISP have a 1850 number for technical support?
And finally some questions should be asked of TE in regard to the quality of their lines - customers give much more - money to TE for Internet service than they do to their ISPs. There is not much evidence that TE make any investment to merit such money.
- Willie (ofarrell.iol.ie)
Mr O'Farrell also had many other suggestions, such as doing tests on the speed to popular sites from different Web sites, and looking for an ISP with an 1850 number for dial up. See main feature above.
. PROXIES: I've just read your "Why the Web is slow" article, which I thought was quite - good avoiding the Americans is indeed one of the best ways to - remove frustration from your Net usage. However, I did think that you should have mentioned Web proxies, given that you mentioned the local cache. Web proxying is likely to be one of the big bandwidth savers in the long run. I believe most of the Irish ISPs have proxies now, and some of them may even be "peering" over their INEX link.
The Cache Now pages talk about some of the more involved - cache/proxy setups that are now in use, and all should be encouraged to use them - a sort of Internet Green Cause. If you are interested there is info available at http://vancouver-webpages.com/CacheNow/
If you are interested, the amount of data in Trinity Colleges caching proxies (maths, computer science and main college) amounts to several GB, and reduces the amount of traffic we cause by about 50 per cent.
-David
(dwmalone.maths.tcd.ie)
. BEEN THERE: An excellent article. I hope more people read it. The suggestions you made I have taken about eight months ago and they are terrific.
Gerald P. Monks PhD
(bailman.pop3.wt.net)
. THINK LOCAL: Having read Computimes on Monday last dealing with the "World Wide Wait", I thought I would let you know about our local ISP here in Mayo ANU Internet Services who are based in Westport. Whatever problems or delays ANU's subscribers may have in browsing the Web, their ISP is not the weak link in the chain.
The reasons for this are: - a "no busy signals" policy; - a guarantee not to oversell their bandwidth;
- a modem speed of 33.6K using a US Robotics Total Control system on a fully digital circuit;
a user:modem ratio of 7:1;
- sufficient connection speed for the number of users and a guarantee to expand as required to maintain quality of service.
One practical example of ANU's superior service was demonstrated when a user in Castlebar connected to another ISP had a file that took four hours to transfer; it came through in 40 minutes using the ANU system. There can of course be a number of explanations for this but the general feedback we get is that ANU's service has at least twice the throughput of the nationals.
Interestingly enough the same tendency has been seen in almost all European countries - the national ISPs gear up, sell like crazy and then have troubles keeping up with demand. Not an easy equation to solve. (Even AOL suffers).
- Lesley Emerson
(prwest.anu.ie)
. MACS: In the "Cache 22" section you recommend holding down Command/Alt on startup to rebuild the desktop. The paragraph suggests this will perform a disk defragmentation. This is inaccurate. A desktop rebuild will only re-index the desktop database file (which holds pointers to all other files on a user's hard drive). While this will result in some - performance gain, it is patently not the same as a defragmentation which will rearrange the actual files themselves so that they are continuous (thus reducing overall access times). This can be achieved through Norton Utilities or some - similar disk tool set.
Indeed, to achieve optimum disk access on a Mac. the disk should first be defragmented. followed by a desktop rebuild. I trust you don't mind me calling your attention to this error. It's just that there is great universal ignorance of the capabilities and/or advantages of Mac OS.
I should, however, commend Computimes on a generally balanced approach to Macs. You usually acknowledge their existence etc. so well done and keep up the good work.
- Peter Mee (ptrmee.iol.ie)
Yes, defragmentation and rebuilding your Mac's desktop are very different.