Maximum PC

I'm giving an old computer to someone who will be accessing the internet through a dial-up internet connection and had a few questions about speeding up the browser as much as possible.

-Are so-called dial-up accelerators beneficial? If so, any recommendations?
-Do you think Chrome would be any faster than, say, Firefox w/Fasterfox?
-Any recommended settings I should change regarding history and whatnot to help load pages faster?

I know only so much can be done here but I was hoping for a few tips.

Chrome is slower anyway. Be carefull with accelerators, some are fake.

Other then port speed and specifics with the init string, there wasn't a lot of things one could do at the PC to speed a connection up noticeably.

The way I remember those accelerators working was it was nothing more then glorified cache (ala AOL) where things would load from there rather then from the page.

Are you giving it to someone in 1997? Is this for Grandma's AOL account? Sorry, couldn't resist.

Jokes aside, there's not much you can do. The quality of a dial up connection is very unpredictable, and the affecting elements are completely out of the users control. Line congestion, weather, distance from the provider, and age of the line itself can all play a role in limiting dial up bandwidth. You'd get better speed tethering to a cell phone.

Not to mention direct variation of speed and the age of the user. Old person=slow speed. Young person= even slower.

That's essentially how I thought they worked. To that end, any free recommendations? The person I'm giving it to is young and impatient so every little bit helps.

Maybe a reliable compressor proxy? I am getting fed up with throttling to less than half what my parents are paying for. When you are paying for 1.5Mbps, half speed is horrible. And when it is at 11 AM and you are trying to access your school documents... Let's just say it sucks sh*t.

You might want to have a modified host file. Saves on bandwidth.

Might be good for Trek, but I run linux on my main surfing pc.

You can add them to a router as well.

Do this things even exist any more? And if they are that impatient, I'm surprised they've lasted this long without the computer you're supposedly giving them.



For dialup?

I have broadband, but if it requires DDWRT, we're out of luck. My router doesn't support it.

It was for noghiri_x. Really any decent router will have site blocking. Best to check your router just to make sure.

I might have that capability later. I am installing WW-DRT today. I just found out that the beta works on the Marvell chip.

You'll definitely have it now.

Sweet! BTW, Fastestfox/Fastestchrome sped things up considerably, as did a frustrated call to Centurylink.