A big thumbs up for Internet service operators who try to sell you more bandwidth and then increase the amount of video flash clips, big bannered ads and general crap they display on their homepage which, as a result, slows your computer down to within an inch of its life before it kick starts into reality again. It's not just the ISP's though. Nearly every web page (with the exception of beloved Google) has a trillion ads that flash and strobe you into a jellied psychotic heap in your chair, dribbling too.The need for speed for users these days has gone beyond the norm as we demand more of everything twice as fast and preferably by yesterday if you please. The problem though can be rectified by teaks within your browser settings and operating systems, but I wonder how many of us actually know how to do this?
There isn't a manual that comes with Windows to tell you how to "Get rid of the crap on the Internet" or for that matter "Get rid of the crap within Windows" because lets face it, if you did that, there wouldn't be a Windows and we'd all be using Linux. This frustration causes you to post endless messages in newsgroups and forums seeking help and assistance. But of course, you have to register a million times in order to do that, so you get millions of Email Verification messages in your mail that you cant access because of all the crap on your ISP's homepage...
Then there is dealing with Spyware, Malware, Trojans, Virus' and AdBlockers and oh my bloody god the list goes on and on, and all these programs that you have to try to download just to deal with this crap, are slowing your machines down even more - so you upgrade your machine to cope with the speed to get more speed - you see where this is all going. The proverbial upgrade loop. Which means spending more money. Ah, these Internet chaps aren't bloody daft are they? I sometimes wonder if this is just another Microsoft conspiracy.
Its all very well having that lightning fast 20MB broadband line, but if there's an extra load of crap on every site - which is increasing every day - your just back to where you started in the first place and that lightning fast line you have just upgraded, will just end up being drizzle.
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5 comments:
What is worse, is when dialup ISP's jack up their rates and do this to their home page. I mean they can't give you more than 56K, so what the hell are they thinking?
And once you wait the 2 hours for the page to load so you can click the link to check your email, you have to wait another 4 hours for that to load because they have it all ajaxy to the point it resembles a desktop application more than webmail.
I can't even check my email with broadband, that's how bad it is. Even if I had unlimited bandwidth, it's so packed with crap that it would bring the fastest pc in the world to its knees. And this is supposed to be used by their dialup customers, who are more likely than not, running older, slower equipment.
I don't think it's a Microsoft conspiracy as much as I think it's a conspiracy with the hardware manufacturers. You need 4 gigs of ram for Vista, and an extra 4 gigs to check your email. You now need a high end gamer system to do the most simple mundane tasks.
And you mentioned Google's homepage as still being simple & fast...but have you checked out their Gmail lately? They are as guilty as the rest when it comes to bloated webmail. I had to change my browser's user agent string to something they never heard of (string: Have mercy on me. Good pc died and I am stuck using an 11 year old pc on dialup!) to get it to allow me to use the lean fast loading basic HTML version. But I do have to give them some credit for at least having a simple version, even if I have to play tricks to get to it.
Very good point indeed and Windows Live Mail also follows similar patterns. Another point suggests there is a huge gap between advertised broadband speeds and the actual speeds users can achieve too.
A survey by the organisation Which? back in 2007 found that broadband packages promising speeds of up to 8Mbps actually achieved far less.
The average speed achieved in the Which? trials was 3Mbps, with the lowest coming in at under 0.09Mbps, barely at dial-up rates, and the maximum only reaching 6.7Mbps.
It is shocking that internet service providers can advertise ever-increasing speeds that seem to bear little resemblance to what most people can achieve in reality, hence the commonly used terms "up to" have been enforced.
According to the survey, only one in 10 of its members thought that a broadband service advertised as up to 8Mbps would actually deliver the top speed.
Virtually no-one will get it. The laws of physics start applying as soon as it leaves the telephone exchange and you would have to live on top of the exchange to get the full whack.
I'm beginning to think that it would be better if we all tied yoghurt pots together with string and talked that way.
Sometimes the speed problem is related to the equipment you have...
If you happen to have an ADSL 2+ line and you are not getting the speeds you should, it might not be your ISP's fault, unless they were the ones that supplied you with obsolete line filters, as this article suggests.
So, check your line filters and complain to your ISP and ask for new ones, if they were the ones that gave them to you. And if they didn't, go shopping and replace them to enjoy a nice speed boost.
The ironic thing about this topic is that I have loaded the page up with so much stuff, that takes longer to download.
I have fallen foul of my own post it would seem and remain the hypocrite.
Well, maybe, but your blog is still fairly new and you are having fun experimenting still, so you are forgiven.
Besides, it still loads within an acceptable amount of time on my old, slow pc with 33.6K dialup, so it isn't all that bad. I didn't get any "unresponsive script" warnings, like I do on a lot of other blogs.
One small tip for you that will help page loading times:
Keep all the javascript as far down in the page as you can, which means rearrange your sidebar widgets so all the ones with javascript are at the bottom, and the faster loading ones are at the top.
Those blog catalog type ones take awhile to load and if they are the last thing on the page to load, at the end of your sidebar, it won't matter much.
And if you come across any flash based widgets that you are tempted to use...DON'T DO IT!!!
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