Get a faster modem

The Modem is, with the ISP, your most basic source of speed when browsing the net. To spare money when buying a modem is a wrong calculation if you use the internet frequently, because you'll need much more time to do everything online. Either you will grow discouraged and miss most of the thrill, or you will be longer online to see a fixed amount of documents, and this will cost you a lot in telephone and ISP charges.

Your ISP (Internet Service Provider, the company that connects you to the internet through your phone) is the second factor in explaining the time it takes to download files from the web. Some ISP's are very efficient and you get the most that your modem can provide, but some offer a poor connection, either because they themselves have a poor backbone (the giant pipes that connect countries to countries), or they have too many customers for their capacity. Shop around to find the quickest ISP, and ask for a full access to newsgroups (there are more than 22'000 in existence) and a flat rate pricing.

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Find out the best time of the day

The speed at which you can download the pages and files you want to see depends A LOT on the time of the day. I have seen repeatedly differences from 1 to 10 during the same day. Check at different hours and days to find out the best time ! I personnally browse the web between 6 AM to 8 AM when people in my country are not already working and people in the USA are already to sleep. The best time of the week is on ... Sunday morning

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Open Multiple Windows

Often, the delay you experience is due to the servers that send you the pages ; but your modem and internet path could bring you more than one page at a time at a ridicule rate. You can browse with 3,4 or as many windows as you want ! Just right-click on the link you'd like to visit and choose Open in New Window. The added advantage is that you can still see the page you came from, which is pretty useful with links lists and search engines answers.

Turn off images

The longest files to download in everyday browsing are images. If you are looking for an information and you can do without the photos, logos and graphics, and your connection is too slow, you can use the following trick : go to Options, and check that Auto Load Images is unchecked. Afterwards, if you need images on a page, you can click on the image icon on the toolbar to display them. Note : I know people who masochistally turn off images even when their connection is good. That deprives them for the multimedia beauty of the Web which makes its strength and beauty. Don't do that !

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Make your bookmarks be your homepage

Most often, the program that your ISP configures your browser to use his own homepage as the first page you see when you launch it. Change it ! If you use your bookmark file as the first page, not only it'll be quicker that everything to load (because it's on your hard drive already), but if you put the adresses of the sites you visit everyday (like Yahoo or CNN) first, it will spare you some movement to get the first adress. HOW ? In Netscape Navigator 3 or lower, open your General Preferences window from the Options menu, click on the Appearance tab, go to Browser starts with, click Browse, find your Netscape Folder, Users, Your Name, and choose Bookmarks.html.