Windows 7, IE8, and dial up

[Onkel Neal]

Ok, my folks decided to retire their 10 year old PC and got a shiny new Dell with Win 7. Nice machine. We were setting it up, and because they have dial up (they live in the country, DSL and Broadband are not available), I called their ISP ATT.net to confirm the access number. The ATT tech, and guy named Bryan who sounded like Apu, said emphatically that Windows 7 machines with IE8 were really problematic with dialup. He said IE8 was the problem, I should download IE7 instead.

We started browsing the web, and yeah, it seems slow as hell. I am really a bad judge because I never see anything slower than 3MBS at my place, but even for dial up this seemed dead slow.

Anyone heard anything like this? I googled Internet explorer 8 dial up att but cannot find anything?

Anyone out there running dial up and Win 7/IE8?

I downloaded FFF and we will give that a try.

[CaptainHaplo]

I have heard a bit about it - has alot to do with all the "built in" so called accelerators in IE8 from my understanding.

Since they are on dialup, first off make sure you tweak the Dial Up Network connector - DUN

http://forums.speedguide.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=68127&highlight=56k+tweakS

^ is a good place to start.

Also read here:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=188887

Also try a different browser - and tweak the settings to not display pictures/animations (flash anims, etc). This will cut down on the bandwidth needs.

Last thing - and I know for our elders its hard enough - but if they could afford it - look into satellite internet. Out in the boonies its the best there is - the latency is high (but that only affects online gaming so isn't likely to be an issue for them) - download speed is comparible to DSL. It is weather affected though.

[longam]

If they can afford $59.00 a month, get them an EVDO mobile broadband card. (coverage needed - you get 30 days to test it)

I used one for a few years when I lived in the sticks and its like having DSL. With sprint you get a 5GB cap /month, but if you dont do a lot of youtube you should have no problem with that.

http://nextelonline.nextel.com/NASApp/onlinestore/en/Action/DisplayPhones?filterString=Mobile_Broadband_Device s_Phone_Char&id12=UHP_PhonesTab_Link_MobileBroadbandCards

Or there is a company that re-sells sprint MBB without the cap for $69.00 /month.

http://www.millenicom.com/nmb.htm

Sounds pricey I know, but you should have seen what I paid for satellite (which now sucks), or ISDN (which went away).

[kiwi_2005]

Ubuntu 9.10 + Elinks Text Browser = Win for dialup users.

[Gato76]

Firefox ?

[Onkel Neal]

So, we went to 8 websites using the new machine, with IE8, FF, and Opera, twice each, waited for each site to load, and timed them. It took about 90 minutes. There were slight variations between the browsers--some executed better on ebay than another would on CNN, but overall, not much difference.

Then I hooked up their Win98 Pentium machine with IE6, did the same. Almost all the websites loaded 25% faster.

I had downloaded IE7 (and even IE6) on my flash drive, but Win 7 no likee.

So, I left them staring at a 4 hour Google Chrome download. Chrome is ok, but I do not like that there is no address bar dropdown.

Dialup really is the pits, man.

[PeriscopeDepth]

Dialup really is the pits, man.
Yeah, not much you can do about that I'm afraid. Modern web design just doesn't consider dial up users and there isn't any way around that.

PD

[Onkel Neal]

Yeah, I aologize to all you dial up users, Subsim took 2.5 minutes to load.:ping:

[FIREWALL]

I guess your folks won't be playing SHV anytime soon with dialup. :haha:

[kiwi_2005]

Yeah, not much you can do about that I'm afraid. Modern web design just doesn't consider dial up users and there isn't any way around that.

PD

Well there is one other way. As I mentioned before 'Elinks browser' would be ideal for dialup users cause of its text only option. Only for Linux users though, a beta version for windows can be found although no longer updated.

[[The system requirements are very low indeed. It is fast and secure; web pages have a consistent look and there are no flashing adverts, pop up windows or other web annoyances. ]]

Of course could drive some round the bend having to learn key commands mouse is hardly use. Best place to learn all this is here:
http://commandline.org.uk/command-line/command-the-web-an-elinks-tutorial/

Man i Love linux! :rock: :D

http://img715.imageshack.us/img715/2906/screenshotl.png