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Christian InTech Articles - Software
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Internet Basics - Getting Started
Everyone must be a beginner at something sometime in his life. And at some point, all of us were new to the internet. Even the most arrogant webmaster who can create sites with his eyes closed was, once, struggling with the concepts of the vast...
System Downtime
Downtime can disrupt your business, customers, and damage your company's reputation. But how do you prevent or minimize downtime? Can a server monitoring service help? To answer these questions, first we need to understand the causes of downtime....
The Importance Of Email Backup
Viruses, software failures, power failures, human errors, hard drive failures are only a few examples of what could destroy the data on a hard drive, including all documents, pictures, emails and other files!
Most home computer users don't need an...
The Proper Way to Put Text Over Your Images
One must be very careful in using photos as backgrounds. If you are planning to have text written atop an image, you must have had acquired the needed software as well as the know-how required in this task. It’s not good to drive your car without...
The Unique Benefits of Recruiting Tracking Software
Human resource departments, staffing agencies, and professional
recruiting firms all need to keep track of the various people
that they deal with. Any company that deals with hiring needs
recruiting tracking software. Recruiting tracking software...
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A Cheap Alternative To Broadband?
Are you a dial-up user looking for a faster connection, but don't like Broadband prices? If so, you should take a look at a new service called OnSpeed, which has received rave reviews in Internet technology publications.
What OnSpeed does is to re-route web pages and email via its own servers, compressing the data on the fly prior to sending it onwards to your PC. A small program then decompresses the data, so that you can view it in the normal way via your browser or email client.
In my own dial-up tests, with a modem running at a nominal 49kb/s I appeared to get speeds close to that of my normal broadband connection of 598 kb/s - very impressive. Image quality is often reduced but the compression for this can be improved, though with an adverse effect on the speed of course.
Also some file types like MP3 cannot yet be compressed. The company is working on these issues however and expects to find solutions soon.
Unfortunately I was unable to use email in my tests, due to a 'port' conflict with a spam filter that I was using. The standard advice on the OnSpeed site for such cases is to disable the
offending program. Not a constructive approach - to say the least - so I hope that the relevant instructions will be changed soon.
More significantly, the problem persisted even when I switched off the OnSpeed application on my PC; in the end I had to remove the program to get
the spam filter working again. I expect that this fault can be resolved, but clearly there are issues in this area that need to be addressed.
The software is easy to install, and is available for Mac as well as Windows PCs. On the whole the service is surprisingly good, and a lot cheaper than broadband. Unlike other 'speed-up'
techniques that tweak your computer's settings but result in little noticeable improvement, OnSpeed really works.
I can recommend OnSpeed for dial-up users who can't justify the expense of broadband, or who are not located close enough to a suitable exchange. OnSpeed is also stated to be great for mobile or PDA users, as GPRS (wireless) speeds can be boosted by as much as 8 times. It even helps with broadband if you can only get a reduced service in your area.
My overall rating is 4/5 - very good, but the email support needs to be improved.
If you want further details of OnSpeed, please visit http://www.On-Speed.net There is a 14 day money-back guarantee, so you can try the service without any risk.
Copyright © Richard Prosser 2004
About the Author
Richard is a software developer and entrepreneur, and may be contacted via the 'Article Tips' site given below. This article may be published without permission, but only in its entirety.
Free email course: "Drive 'Hot' Prospects To Your Site For Free!"
http://www.ArticleTips.com
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