'The page cannot be displayed'. Is this a very 'funny' message that frustrates you?. Every time you see this you feel deishearted..right..? Most of the people who depend on dial-up internet connections have to suffer a lot of problems ranging from a problem as simple as a page not found and which extends up to a timed out connection. Me too experienced a lot of problems as this about an year ago. Here is how I got along with that problem. I did not switch to a broadband connection but I did a little changes on the way I browsed. A little self-adjustment.
First to enjoy a good browsing you need a good PC. Clean up your PC. If needed format the hard-disk and remove all unnecessary programs. This will give you the basics for good browsing.
Second one is to plan your browsing. Remember that, as a dial-up user you are paying for every second you are online. So the faster you finish the jobs, the more money you have in your pocket. Write down on a piece of paper all the things that you have to do in that log-in session. If needed number the tasks in order. That is, plan the sequence in logical order so that you wont have to visit some pages again and agian or log-in to your e-mail id twice.
McAfee Says that every computer connected to the internet has at-least a single malicious code a virus. Do monitor your PC with a good anti-virus which is capable of finding and removing spy-ware and add-ware. Norton is fine. McAfee is good too. If spy-ware is present it will be acitve when you are online and sends unwanted data. So you will have sacrifice a lot of your connection speed. Also disable all automatic updates of various programs that you might have.
In my opinion Internet Explorer is a really good browser. Its simple and looks good. But we have got a lots of other bowsers which are much faster than the Internet Explorer. for Instance ' Opera' which is the fastest web-browser, is available free of cost and takes you to the page lightning fast. It caches all the pages you visit ( check out its preferences if you have one ) and brings it to you right from your hard-disk next time you access the pages. Let me giive you an example. If you get a forward of some pictures in Internet Explorer you have to right-click and select 'Save picture as..' for every picture. Opera caches all the images it display in to its cache ( which is in the profile folder of the installed folder of opera ). so you need not save each one of them separately. You can get it from its cache.
Also in opera you need not wait for the page to load when you choose the 'back' button. It will come instantly. But in IE the page loads from the server every time. Using opera an definitely save your time. Firefox is also a really good one.
Opera has got a feature which lets you block images in a page. So you can let only the text load in a purticular page. This is somethig which can make browsing more enjoyable as text takes only seconds to load and you will get every page really fast.
Most of the internet users depend on the download applet of Internet Explorer to download files. Why dont you try using something like 'Free Download Manager' or ' Download Acceleraor'..? They can make many simultaneaous connections to a server and can bring the files to your PC faster than the IE does. Also you can pause your downloads and continue with them the next time you are connected to the internet. So you can always save time. Free Download Manager is a free software. Click this for the latst version : http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm
Some people think that they can browse faster if they use only one window for browsing. i.e they use only one Internet Explorer window and does the second task only after completing the first one. In my opinion this is wrong. Having two or three ( More that that can make it really slow.. ) internet Exlorer or Opera windows is good. For example if you have to visit your friend's web-site as well as check mail you can check mail in one window while the other page loads in the other. Or you can do a download while you read your mails. Thus you can save a lot of time.
Then something you need to do is to find the best time in which you get the maximum connection speed. For example in my region ( or probably in India ) the best connection time is from 1.00 am to 8.00 am. At that hours I used to get the best connection speeds. By logging on to net at different times you can find the best time. At some times like the times when the server is busy, you get more ' cannot find page' messages and more 'connection timed out' error messages. So choosing the best time will help.
Also look to the modem properties and make sure that the maximum connection speed is set to the value above the maximum the modem supports. ( I dont know why such an option is set by microsoft when every one is looking for more speeds. Can someone tell me why..? ).
I think with these things you can get more out of your dial-up connection. These days broadband internet is getting more and more cheaper. It would be good if every one switch to broadband internet to find the endless oppertunities over the internet. Wish you all a happy browsing. Move on.
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