sloooow internet browsing in mac osx?

lilbandit

lilbandit

I hate Meath
Having used pcs all my life, I bought a G4 powerbook recently. I love osx but internet speed is way slower than the linux box and even the win98 box I have at home. As a newcomer to macs, is there a setting that i should have in place? I have no exotic setup, simply the built in modem and the numbers for DNS and dial up. For example, accessing this site is very slow, accessing hotmail is painstaking and even loading up the lord of the rings movie site took an age compared to other systems that I use. Any advice appreciated in advance!!
 
IE for OS X is a slow piece of junk.

Try using Chimera
It's a beta right now, but it works way better than IE does for most things.

There's also Omniweb
which is pretty good, but not HTML standards compliant.
 
Have you checked the speed of the modem? :p But since i live in sweden i really shouldnt try to give advice in this matter... have heard that modem over the phoneline is much faster in north america than here (but now nearly everyone in sweden except me uses fiber-optic lines, those darn speed-freaks :) ) in a week my house will also be connected!
 
Yep, the government (god bless them, or something) have a goal that everyone will be connected by 2004, the cities are taken care of already, but i live in the forest, so they have not pulled it out here yet. Have to call a friend and ask him what kind of speed he gets from it. i'll be back reporting later.
im not very technical and the names of the technology is in swedish i think, so maybe fiber-optic is not the right english word. but as i said, i'll get back to you. :)
 
Ok, now i know... Its called LAN (Local Area Network?) and its fiber-optic and my friends connection is around 1400 kb/s (in the summer, since he live in a student-corridor and everyone is sharing the band-width, it goes faster when he's alone :)
on my modem (56) i have around 5 kb/s :)
 
That sounds like a similar plan that was shot down by the Canadian Govt. There was a plan to connect all houses in Canada by 2003 or 2004, but it was shot down because it wasn't seen as important enough(to the old people in control of the country :p) to spend billions of dollars on.

I think you have it right when you say fiber-optics. That's a technology that uses light over tiny glass fibers.

It would make sense to deploy fiber everywhere if a govt was going to spend a lot of money on bringing broadband internet access to the entire country. Fiber is very scalable, meaning it's only limited by the hardware on either side of the fiber, and not limited by the fiber itself.

Do you have any links for more info on this?

1400k/s is pretty descent.
 
And i might add that in sweden you pay for every minute you are connected by modem/phone (i think i have read somewhere that there are fixed monthly prices in usa/canada.) When using fiber-optic it will be fixed prices, so i will finally be able to use all the kool connected-all-the-time interet services and use the internet radio without sweating money :)
 
Yep, here and in the US, you have unlimited local calling for a certain price per month.

Most dial-up ISPs have unlimited hours here as well.
 
Sorry, no good link... whats the regular speed on modems in canada in kb/s?
my top speed was 10 kb/s using a ftp-program, but noway it will be higher than 5 in a browser. The government here is very fond of the idea that people should stay on the countryside and do their office work over the internet to keep the villages alive and stop people moving to the cities. i think thats why they bother digging trenches all over sweden burrying fiber :)
 
It depends where you are. If you live in the country here, most likely you would be on a remote telephone terminal. This affects connection speed, so max is probably 3-4KB/s. If you live in a city, you might get lucky and get 5-6KB/s.

The theoretical maximum for 56K modems is just a little over 6KB/s, although once I got about 12KB/s for 10 seconds or so :)

I'm using wireless broadband here now that I get from 100KB/s to 300KB/s.

I'll be switching over to 3.5Mbit DSL in a few weeks though. :D
 
Modems here go 5KB/sec, just like you described. However, Cable modems, which use the Cable TV lines, and DSL modems which utilize unused frequencies in the phone line rather than making noises, can go much higher, although citizen level service usually peaks at about 200KB/sec if you are paying 40$/month or so.

1400KB/sec (over 1 MB/sec) is pretty good... darn those socialist-influenced governments for actually giving citizens good connections! :D
 
Yep, and we only have to pay 15 bucks a month for it here in Gothenburg if you're a student. (and the pc-folks have to buy a network-card, HAHA:D ) But i feel bad for jumping the subject of this thread :o We have a person in distress here:p
 
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