Working with limited Internet access
14:14, 30 December 2009
.. Posted in techculture and tech to help.. Link
Here's your mythbusters for today: Not everyone has Internet access, not everyone who has Internet has constant access, and not everyone who doesn't have 24/7 access lives in a developing country.
Maybe you are in an airport or hotel that charges a stupidly huge amount of money for Internet access, and you can afford just one hour. Maybe you are in an area where Internet access is slow or not continually available. Or maybe your access is wonky, for whatever reason, and while the tech staff is working to fix the problem, you still need to access info online.
TechSoup staff member Elliot Harmon wrote about an interesting discussion on MetaFilter about how to use the Web with bandwidth limitations. Harmon says that "The user who started the discussion has only mobile broadband access, so he was trying to keep his costs down. But I think a lot of the recommendations would be equally useful for people with dial-up Internet access or other slower connections."
Harmon is right on! Here are his favorite suggestions:
- Rather than visiting all of the Web sites you need to see every day, start using RSS feeds.
- Most Web browsers allow you to disable all images: they'll simply appear as rectangles. When you need to see an image, you can have the browser load them automatically. Similarly, Flashblock lets you choose when to load Flash elements.
- Firefox Throttle is a Firefox plug-in that monitors your bandwidth usage. If you're paying for mobile access by the megabyte, then something like this is essential.
- But on the other hand, your Web browser isn't the only program that hogs your Internet access. Use Comodo Internet Security to control when and how other applications are going online.
- Disable prefetch. Firefox has an engine that preloads the most popular pages on a site when you first visit that site. I've had marked improvements in performance after disabling prefetch, even on a fast connection.
