Dial-up users & issues

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’d find it interesting to hear from dial-up users in relation to the new software. My current connect speed is 29.2 and sometimes it hits a crushing 40k but the 20’s to around 30 is the norm.

That said, I don’t know if it is my imagination but it seems as if the header pages are running slower than the old software. Any other impressions? I know there isn’t likely anything which can be done other than, live with it or quit the forums.

I tried to turn off all the graphics in the signatures like I had in the old forums but can’t seem to understand how this is done on this forum. Over at Trainorders which has few graphics you can even set the display so pictures only show as thumbnails and then you can enlarge them if you want to spend the extra time to view them.

I know this is the opposite of the “great new format” messages I seen so many of but wonder if I’m alone in these thoughts?

Dale

2

Dale

I used to be on dial up as well and am well aware of the nature of this forum and the whole Trains.com site in general. I found it took a long time to load and with peoples signatures being loaded down with animated gifs and pics it was really time consuming to read the forums. I know this doesn’t help but let you be aware that there are and were many who felt your pain. I added an avitar to mine here but I kept away from the Jpegs and gifs in the signature. Sorry

Ric

3

I’m on 52k and I’ll say it is certainly no faster, and possibly a little slower. I like the look and content though. I’ll have to give it a couple of weeks before I can give a real review.

Ron

4

Does turning off the display of avatars, signatures and Emoticons help you any ?

5

Anything you can turn off will help your loading time. I am on cable so this site doesn’t bother as much, but I turn them off on other sites which are much worse. I can’t help specifically on this forum, but in genneral, if you edit your profile there is a place to turn off the garbage.

6

I logged on twice today – at work’s Cybercafe with fast connection, and at home over land lines. I think it is slower than the prior version. I think the fixed graphics even on the home page seem to be the cause. It is also challenging my monitor’s screen size.

Dave Nelson

7

I’m on dialup and the pages are loading about the same for me. I usually get a connection speed of 38.6 - 44.0 Kbps.

8

Does seem a bit slower, penalty for more graphics. It got a little better after the first few threads as more of the stuff got cached. Now that there’s avatars, that’s another set of graphics to load - people PLEASE don’t change your avatars like you change underwear, pity us poor folks who can;t get any broadband (because if I could, I’d have it)

Good place for another reminder - signature pictures need to be kept small! Byte count, not image size (although I believe this software limits the image size as well). You can make 250x250 pixel images that are half a megabyte - please don’t. I noticed for a while there a few peopel were putting notices on picture-heavy topics - please continue to do so.

–Randy

9

I can imagine that load times would be longer for dial up users as most new software tends to get larger and send out more data, therefore making it slower to load for those with very limited speeds. Its the slowest part of the connection that will govern how fast it runs. As a cable modem user, I have found that this site is running much faster for me tonight because they have increased bandwidth on the server (I would bet) so I am able to get the packets into my machine faster… What is a problem for one is a benefit for others. Just the way life works I guess. Hope you folks find ways to get it to load faster!

10

I’m on dialup, usually connect at 44k, and realized a while back that slow loads are a part of the site.

I used Netscape for a while, with Java and active content turned off, much faster than IE, but it messes the formatting up so bad I bit the bullet and use IE now.

An external modem, (USRobotix is a good choice) can buy a few more KBper second out of noisy phone lines, but be prepared to spend a hundred bucks to get a decent one. Check the return policy in advance, in case you see no improvement in speed.

A new website will always load slower than an old one, because none of the graphics, from either the site or from any and all ad servers are not yet stored in your cache. Give it a few days before you lock in a judgement.

I often surf a text only site in a seperate browser while reading here. I select a thread to view, flip over to the other browser and read for a bit, then come back here to find the heavy graphics all loaded up and ready to read. By choosing a text only site for the alternate, it avoids having the download here stepping on page loads over there so bad.

If it really gets unbearable, look into cable, DSL, ISDN, satellite, or a dedicated OC-128 to your desktop. In rural areas, DirectPC or 5.2 or 5.7 mHz wireless may be your only upgrade path. 5.2 is good for around 10 miles, and 5.7, which is allowed reflectors on both ends of the pipe can reach out to around 30 miles per hop. I was quoted a price of $100 per month for 5.7 wireless, with throuhput of 1.5 mbps (one T1 equivalent) up and 4.5 mbps (three T’s) down. That’s more bandwidth than our entire airline (11th largest in US) used to use for 7000 users, and we paid $3k a month for two T1’s.

You could get some neighbors to go in on a deal like that, set up a small wireless network and probably make a profit doing it. Check with your ISP on that, they may ot appreciate the competition.

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11

I don’t observe any obvious change in the speed at which things react - I’ve always shyed away from going to topics and posts where the narrative indicates that a large amount of memory is obviously going to be required i.e. with photographs. I intend to remedy this dial-up nonsense in the very near future - QWEST tells me they can’t provide broadband service to my address - why; who knows - twenty years of (broadband) electronics in the Air Force and nothing they say makes any sense - I have yet to locate a satellite broadband provider - and don’t tell me AT&T - I have a 38 year hatred for AT&T and they will be the SOBs of last resort even if it costs me twice as much to do business with someone else - that’s how badly I hate those %^$#+%^#@&^.

I spent a good part of the afternoon trying to get the new forum’s search engine/mechanism to work to no avail; in the meantime I have came up with another problem - as long as I don’t do anything but read the forum I have no problem “backing” (i.e. using the “back” key) up to the MSNTV Homepage; if, on the other hand, (and this has happened twice and just as soon as I finish with this post I will find out if it is going to happen a third time ) when I try to back out of the forum to the homepage after making a post or doing a search I find myself in what is affectionately known as a blind webpage - no matter how many times you hit the back key you are trapped on the same page. If it happens again it will be a fair guesstimate that there is a glitch in the system and, as an ex-programmer I can relate some hair-raising stories about glitches.

12

I use dail-up and the site seems to download quicker for me.