I live out in the country and there's no high-speed access here.* I am using a 56K dial-up line, a 30 year old technology.
I, too, have trouble with most sites linked from FR. My solution is to be proactive and use free tools to clean up and speed up loading these sites:
- Ghostery disallows sites from tracking me and eliminates the Discus comments which take forever to load at 56K.
- AdBlockPlus is my main weapon. I don't see pop-up ads, video ads that start as soon as you get to the site, most images and all the fancy graphics.
ABP come with a great set of filters and lets you add your own filters as well. I have added hundreds of custom filters and most sites load fairly quickly. I have found if you use ABP to deny a site access to it's .css files you can really cut down on wasted broadband. After all, if you're like me, you're most interested in the text on a site and not all the fancy addons and graphics.
*Before you respond to this reply with a story about satellite Internet, been there, tried that, didn't like the results or the customer service. As for using a cell modem, I've tried that too. Get disconnected too much and $70/month is way too much just for Internet service that is too unreliable.
You might get the idea from this reply that I'm a curmudgeon. You'd be right :)
Oh, and since this is a FReepathon thread, DONATE NOW TO FREE REPUBLIC. Become a monthly donor of $5 or $10. Set it up in your checking account as a recurring transaction. Help FR!
I just ditched my satellite, because I, too, am in the country. I am now trying ATT’s mobile wifi. So far it’s better than the satellite, more gigs, faster, allows up to 10 computers to connect, costs slightly less than the satellite, and as it says, it’s mobile. I can take it with me.
Thanks for the AdBlockPlus.
I just installed it for free and got an update in a couple of minutes for my IE and Windows 7 Premium.
Now Comcast is loading in seconds instead getting hung up on monster ad programs.
The annoying popup and stay ads are not there. They remind me of the welfare people in our lives. They come in uninvited and take over.
Ad Muncher stopped working on the latest version of IE and Comcast. It does a great job with Google Chrome.