EVEN IF YOU'RE spending top dollar for high-speed Internet service, you may not be receiving the perfor¬mance you expect. Make sure that you have the latest modem your ISP offers. You can often get the company to send a newer one just by making a quick phone call, though some ISPs will ask you to renew your service contract for another year before doing so.

For optimizing network performance in XP or Vista, we like Totalldea Software's Tweak-XP Pro Premium (find it on the OVO) and Tweak¬VI Premium. Both apps do the job without requiring Registry editing or accessing hidden Windows settings.

Both packages include dozens of tweaks in addition to network and browser adjustments. Network Magic Pro (install it from the OVO)
also optimizes.

Name: Speed Up Your Broadband Browsing Experience.jpg Views: 301 Size: 20.1 KB

System-level optimization is less important in Vista than in XP, since Vista tunes
your TCP stack dynamically (TCP is a data-exchange protocol). Vista users can frequently get away with optimizing just specific applications, especially their Web browsers. To speed up Firefox page dis¬plays, try Firetune (find it on the OVO) or Fasterfox (install it from the OVO). Both utili¬ties are free and easy. Fast¬erfox adds a few more cus¬tomization options for expert users. Both tweak low-level settings such as cache memory capaCity, maximum simultaneous connections, and "pipelining" (handling multiple data requests simultaneously).

Frequent downloaders can save time with a down¬load manager such as Download Accelerator Plus (find it on the OVO), which manages the entire download process, creates multiple simultaneous download links, and then puts the file together afterward. Just click a download; the pro¬gram does the rest. It inte¬grates well with Internet Explorer and Firefox.