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Hello Maggie,

My wife has had Onspeed on her PC for several months having taken up the 'free' offer from BT Internet to install it.

It certainly speeds up a dial-up connection (it's showing a speed up factor of 4.46 whilst I type this).

The only slight glitches have been the occasional requirement to re-type the user name and password (of the ISP) and this has happened after a thorough hard drive clearout/defrag. etc.

I think it's excellent.

Alfa.

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I've had it since March and am "fairly pleased" with it.  It does speed things up,  but can't make things faster if you have the sort of ISP that many of us have,  ie one that seems to "go to sleep" (no traffic) for - say - half a minute at a time.   This is not Onspeed's fault of course,  it does speed up the process when the ISP is working at full tilt.

It does NOT speed up such things as Acrobat documents as these are already compressed effectively.   JPG picture quality is compromised a little if the acceleration is set too high.

May be worth mentioning that it can be installed on more than one computer (contrary to what they say).  We have it on a lap top and a main computer (in different countries so they cannot be used simultaneously).  I imagine they would take a dim view (rightly so) of one subscriber logging on to the net from several computers at the same time!

Certainly it means that we are putting off the Broadband decision indefinitely.

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I would quite agree that in some circumstances it can speed up connections, but in no way is it really a substitute for broadband though because there is a loss of quality. If you are just viewing graphics-heavy web sites you won't notice this, but if, like me, you have to handle a lot of high-resolution graphics files or PDF documents then onspeed will not be able to help you.

It can do little to overcome poor quality connections or sites that are just slow - I doubt if anybody would notice any appreciable increase in speed of this forum using onspeed.

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Thanks to you all for your replies ... I think I may well try it.  At the moment we can't get broadband here - we can only 'upgrade' to their slightly faster connection - and France Telecom have advised us that it probably won't work here most of the time anyway!  Thanks again.
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Far be it for me to disagree with such an eminence as Will T C,  but in fact Onspeed revolutionises the speed of this forum.  In my experience (and I hate computers and know nothing about them) it's just this sort of thing that really does benefit.   But I don't know why!
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I have been using Onspeed for simply ages. It does improve the download time of pages I view (I use ISDN and it claims an average of 5.5-ish). HOWEVER, it seems to have connection issues to some (most) servers - whilst it does improve the speed of the download from OS to you, there is often a significant delay in starting to send the page, this can be several seconds (with, e.g. AngloInfo). Net result is a saving of nothing, to an actual slowing of the download. This is not a site problem, as turning off OS improves the download speed.

And NOTHING improves the speed of this site......

 

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I've probably used it for two years how. It works for me very well on ISDN (probably the case where it works best) to the extent I would not like to do without it.

I don't get any server-based timeouts, but I do occasionally have problems connecting to the OnSpeed proxy itself, however my networking environment is very complex.
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Very interesting comments.  I've just turned onspeed "off" and it seems to me that the LF forum runs at about half the speed now.  The only explanation I can offer is that in general our dial up is viewed as slow (we are in Devon/24) compared say to people in London.   When I complain that someone has sent me a 1MB attachment and that it's taken 15 mins to download they reply that it only takes them 7 mins to move that sort of stuff around on dial-up

So maybe ONspeed works for me for that reason (sluggish dial-up).   But really I don't know and I will continue to try it on and off because some of the comments here suggest that I'm wasting my dosh.....

What I'm waiting for is a PAYG Broadband system, as it isn't worth signing up for a one year contract for us as we are in France for a lot of it.   And some UK neighbours reckon they've found a BB package that is 1p per minute,  nothing if you don't use it.  Will investigate further.

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If you have a V92 modem (standard of the last two years or so) and non-ISDN dial up, I would think that the majority of the benefits of OnSpeed would be lost, lossy image compression being the big speedup.

If you have an older modem on a dial-up (non-V92), then OnSpeed will manage to compress web pages a lot more than your existing modem, for the simple reason the previous compression standard was written a long time before web pages were invented.

If you have ISDN, you have no intrinsic compression and OnSpeed will give you a very good experience.

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I have used OS for about a year with a Tiscali dial up and I find it definately does make a difference. It's not until you turn it off that you see how slow it was before!

With regard to images, generally I don't need the best quality all the time and when I do, I just do a "show original image" and get the proper quality.

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This one is for Martin Watkins,

 

First, Martin, I agree with everything you say about Onspeed.  I'm also "fairly satisfied".  I have stopped pulling my hair out, especially for this forum where I had virtually given up using it since it changed - I used to be a regular contributor.

 

I don't accept your modesty when you say you know nothing about computers when I have bought two downloads, one for the UK and one for France, and you have managed to install one download on two computers.  How did you do it?

 

Regards,

 

Chico

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Well chico I am overwhemed......

Seriously - whilst I love satellite technology,  I have a very short fuse and if a computer doesn't do its stuff first time I go back to pen/paper/stamp/phone and a lot of verbal abuse,  which strains the milk of human kindness amongst those around me.

In answer to your question,  when you originally purchased OnSpeed you would have downloaded a file (in my case 906 kB) called Onspeed Installation.   With a bit of luck it's still on your computer somewhere (all mine go into folders called My Download or Downloaded files because I'm so stupid I've only just noticed that I have two places to lose things like this,  rather than one!)

You would have double-clicked on this installation file and this would have installed the actual gubbins of Onspeed somewhere else - eg in Program Files.   Then you would have gone back on the internet and the Onspeed sign in window would have appeared,  which you filled in and voila!

All I did was to transfer the installation file onto my laptop (it would fit on a floppy disk in this case, although I used a USB cable which I bought about a year ago,  and allows you to hook up two computers,  with a Windows Explorer type display on each screen that then allows you to squirt limitless files back and forth - one of the most useful pieces of insulated copper I have ever purchased) and repeat the process;  when I went back on the internet with the second computer the sign-in window reappeared and I signed in a second time (I was all ready to say "OK this hasn't worked" but it did).

There is always someone to say - Oh but you shouldn't have done that - but my attitude is that it is physically impossible for me to use both computers on the net at the same time and therefore I am not doing anything in a practical sense to try and obtain a double service.   A bit like not buying two copies of a Mozart CD just because I have one CD player at home and one in the car.   But I daresay there are some who would feel that this is sailing close to the wind....

In any case I am sure that Onspeed have a method of detecting if two computers with the same identifiers try to log in to the service simultaneously...

 

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I have broadband in the UK, and onspeed is enabled on my laptop which goes back and forth to France.  I have the impression that it is advantageous for some things but not others. As I understand it, there will certainly be an initial delay in getting a page as it has to be requested via onspeed's server and then be compressed before sending on to you. So the time saving will be a function of the difference between your direct dial-up's ACTUAL delivery speed and Onspeed's broadband, the size and content of the page you want, and the time it takes onspeed to respond to your request.

Using illustrative and not actual numbers, assume your dial up delivers 5k/sec and onspeed's broadband system can receive 100k/sec; the page you want is 100k, and it takes Onspeed 1 sec to pass your page request.

It will take you 20 sec to get this page directly.  

Via onspeed, it takes 1 sec to respond to your request, OS gets the page back in another 1 sec. If it can compress it 50% down to 50k it will take you another 10 secs to receive, for a total of 12 secs from requesting it, about a 1.66 times speed increase.

If they can compress it 90%, down to 10k it will take you 2 sec to receive for a total of 4 sec, a 5 times increase.

If they can only compress it 10% down to 90k it will take you 18 sec to receive for a total of 20 sec. - no improvement 

However if the page you want is only 10k you can get it direct in 2 sec. Using Onspeed and 90% compression it will be 1k and you get it in 1.3 sec. If they can only compress it 10% it will be almost 3 sec before it's delivered, i.e. SLOWER than direct dial.  The Onspeed control shows how much compression they have actually achieved but not the total lags in responses.   

Also, I found it needs to be disabled for some functions such as updating my website as my host doesn't recognise it as authorised to send changes. It's easy to turn on and off.

Overall I think it is worth having and I have just renewed my subs for it. I am also very interested in their Netaway service which is a global network of dialup ISP numbers which is paid for upfront at about £25 think but then deducts credit on a minute-by minute actual usage at about 5p/minute, so you have "local" dial-up numbers in over 100 countries. Of course these are not all true local numbers in the sense that the nearest one to me is Marseille which is 80 miles away, but if you travel a lot on business and use email programmes like Outlook, it looks like a good service since it claims to have an outgoing email relay for these. These programmes often have difficulty sending via other ISPs and currently require a full price international call. Telekonnect aren't able to apply their low cost calls to overseas ISP numbers due to FT's monopoly on this. 

When combined with Onspeed and a low cost French phone such as Telekonnect it appears to provide a workable economic alternative to a French broadband for intermittent use to send email rather than international calls. At present Will keep you posted as I try it out.  

Steve

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