Mrs A

On a more serious note, when your computer runs this slow is napster the only thing running? Does this happen after a fresh boot, or only if the comptuer has been on for a long time? What else is running in the background? This shouldn't be happening, so give us some more information and we'll see what can be done.

Steve

You seem to be referring only to internet behavior in your question. If so, then in addition to Steve's advice (always on the mark), an additional factor to consider is the sort of connection involved and how many downloads are going on at the same time. Downloads do seem to take priority over changing URLs in the browser in terms of bandwidth, but whether or not this is true, each job you ask your browser to handle splits your bandwidth. Broadband connections can handle this reasonably well--they have much greater bandwidth. Over a dialup connection, try not to have more than one download proceeding at one time, no more than two, if you want to just let the downloads run and not travel any farther while this is going on. In addition, you may want to look into going to a place such as BrowserTune to optimize your system for the internet, and also, depending on your sort of connection equipment, there are sites available which will test that equipment in terms of optimizing settings for it to increase your connection speed and hopefully your throughput.

Kay

You certainly seem to know your stuff...I do have a dial up connection, but what is a broadband connection and how do I get this?

Jan

Steve,

Right now I'm only downloading 2 songs from Napster. And still it's VERY slow. Not sure what all is running other than NAV and Callwave (my internet answering system). How do I find this out? Ctrl-Alt-Del?? I think Kay is probably right that I have a poor ISP connection.

Jan

Steve,

Right now I'm only downloading 2 songs from Napster. And still it's VERY slow. Not sure what all is running other than NAV and Callwave (my internet answering system). How do I find this out? Ctrl-Alt-Del?? I think Kay is probably right that I have a poor ISP connection.

Jan

Jan-I'm not Steve or Kay but I may be able to answer some of your basic questions. If you have a dial-up service, the speed of your connection is determined primarily by your ISP(Internet Service Provider) who provides your dial-up service, and the website you are accessing(like Napster). The website is "hosted" on a server, which is pretty much a bunch of hard drives that you connect to via the internet. So your computer is hooked up to these servers and depending how busy they are is how fast your internet access is. Sometimes, it is very slow(www=World Wide Wait), you have no control over this. If you try to download, say, two songs from Napster, these two downloads will split your access speed. "Broadband" most times means cable or DSL access to the internet, and works more like a "network". Hope this helps-don't worry, you'll be an expert soon. Ron B

Thanks for the info. It did help.

Jan