To Slow

[Wil]

Well after being a regular member of this and the previous 3 boards I guess technoligy has finally gotten my goat. I have been unable to connect to the board for several days and for the last month or so things have just continously slowed up. I don't have the sparee time to sit and wait for the slow down loads, if and when they come. I will miss the great comaradarie(?) of all of you gentlemen and not miss the few %*)$@& that I have encountered over the past few years. Continued good luck to you all. And Muhammad keep up the good work, I know you have given this and the previous boards a lot of dedication and hard work, but this has just gotten unusable for me.

Wil

 

[ejb]

Wil, are you sure it is not a problem at your end? an ISP perhaps? I am on this board every day (at least) and haven't had a problem in months...

 

[MChalkley]

Wil, there's almost certainly a problem on your or your ISP's end. This is a pretty vocal bunch when it comes to performance problems, and there's not been any mention of it from anyone else. I noticed some slowness yesterday, but everything else on the net was, too. Other than that, I haven't seen any problems.

You might also try reducing the number of posts displayed on a page to cut down on the total amount of data sent per page.

Mark

 

[Wil]

I think the ISP is probably the biggest part of the problem but I think the board has gone "post" crazy. A seperate post to each person that has responded to your message so you can get your numbers up and a more impressive user class is no class as far as I'm concerend. Quality of information and willingness to try to help is what has been helpful to all of us. Not cyberbable.
It took two attempts to be able to connect and respond to your message. I tried to view Mark's post and it locked up on me.
Thanks for your concern.

Wil

 

[MChalkley]

Wil - There is definitely something else wrong, especially if your system "locked up" while you were trying to view posts.

Obviously, I can't speak for everyone, but, personally, when I respond to messages separately, it's to make it clear in "Threaded" mode to whom and which which message I'm responding to. In an environment like this one, we don't copy the previous message's text in our response, (which is one of the things that most irritates me about mailing lists) so it helps to be clear about who and what you're responding to.

That said, I agree that there's a fair amount of posts that are cyberbabble as opposed to quality information, and I'm probably as guilty as anyone of contributing to it, but there's also a lot to be said for genuine meaningful participation outside the technical arena. For that matter, the majority of conversation that distinguishes the communication of friends from that of acquaintances would fall into the category of meaningless drivel, from a "quality of information" standpoint.

Mark

 

[Muhammad]

Wil,

Addressing the connection issue first, have you gone through the possibilities on your end? As others said, access has not been a problem. A few users had some very slow connections and wound up having some problems on their end. We always keep it as fast as possible.

 

[BobT]

Hi Wil,

Sorry to hear of your frustration with speed. However, the basic problem is likely not the board or the number of posts. I access at work on a T-1 line,, and from home on a rural ISP which is about as bad as it gets (probably just like yours). TractorByNet is NOT the slowest loading site I visit. Both MSNBC and CNN are FAR slower for me.

Bird had a tough speed problem for weeks, and it turned out to be solved by upgrading the firmware on his modem. There are so many "changes" to the technology that occur behind the scenes, as it were, and no body will tell you that things have changed or that you need a new BIOS, or driver or whatever. Things just get worse, and more and more frustrating.

Also, many people today are using P90 and slower computers, which they probably shelled out good dough (e.g. $2,000 plus) just a couple of years ago. They still think of their machines as "new." In fact, new machines today are in the P600-800 Mhz range. Believe me, these new machines are much, much faster than the old class of computers. If you are using an even older machine, such as a DX66 or whatever, well ... you just aren't going to find any setup with such a machine to "get speed." My brother just upgraded from a four year old Mac to a Dell P800. He really couldn't believe the improved speed, even on a dial up 56K modem. So, the basic machine does make a big difference.

The rural phone lines are almost all unsuited to data transmissions of the type that we require these days. I once had my line tested for an ISDN connection, and the line turned out to be too "dirty" to handle it. And of course, the phoneco has no intention of upgrading anything around here. So, like you, I am "stuck" until real wireless broadband arrives in force, which will likely be late this year or longer.

I realize it is not a happy prospect to spend more and more money on technnology, but if you are running an older machine, it may be time to upgrade. Two years is about the "window" of usefulness of a new machine. This techcology is great, but tough on the greenbacks!

Also, you should make sure you are using the latest version of browser software. I find a lot of people are waaay back on version 1 of Netscape or 2 of IE. Again unfortunately, the downloads to upgrade are in thge 40 meg range, and this keeps a lot of people on older versions.

If you know a computer geek-type person who would come by your place and look over your setup, it is possible he or she could evaluate your equipment and setup and make suggestions as to how and if you could improve your speed.

All I know is, I keep reading about all the great new advances we are getting, but the total experience just gets worse---until you hit cable or DSL.

You can go to http://www.getspeed.com and type in your physical address. They will give you a free report on every available connection for your area, with links to the providers. Ariuzona is clear sky country, and a LOT of wireless companies are moving in there right now.

About excessive posts. The board definite has seen a visible increase in posts. But I do not personally feel it is cyberbabble. There is some friendly bantering, but that is far better than the screaming, maniacal garbage that takes over many boards. This is a first class board, IMO. But this issue has nothing to do with the speed of access. With all of the filtering and search features, one can get to the messages one wants easily. There are literally thousands of direct posts on very helpful topics. Maybe 1% are of a personal nature, which is typical on a board of this volume.

Good luck.

BobT.

A Indiana Boy

 

[Bird]

Wil (if you're still around), hate to see you leave the forum. I live far enough out in the country that I don't have much choice as far as ISP and phone line quality. I finally got mine to where it works fine in the early morning, a bit slow and/or erratic in the middle of the day, and sometimes so slow that I just give up in the evening.

I like to read all the messages posted, but as we continue to get more people using the forum, it may soon be impossible for me to find time to do that.

And I agree with you that we have a lot of "unnecessary" messages, get far off the topic at times, post messages in the wrong forum, etc., etc. Unfortunately, none guiltier than I./w3tcompact/icons/blush.gif But I really don't even keep count of the number of messages or care what my numbers or title are; I just talk too much/w3tcompact/icons/laugh.gif, but I do like the information and stuff I've learned on the forum, and I do have fun./w3tcompact/icons/wink.gif

Bird

 

[W5FL]

Stick around and help keep us in line. I used to hate seeing a question I asked about augers in rock turns into an oil discussion, but soon discovered that it kept the conversation going and resulted in getting answers to most of my questions (and I learned a lot about oil). I still have many more questions, but find that many of my problems are somewhat unique to my location and takes a wide variety of users to have that few that have applicable experience to share.

I was having a terrible problem with long delays. Got no help from my ISP. Finally gave up and put in my old External 33K Zoom Modem instead of the 56K Internal Modem that came with this Compaq computer. That fixed my problem.

The board is running pretty fast now. I always blame the cable modems for taking up all the bandwidth (and I believe there is a lot of truth in that) because many areas of the Internet seem to be almost in gridlock at times and I see people downloading whole CD's at times.

I believe the Internet serves a lot of people through forums like this, through specific interest mailing lists (and digests), through NEWS and provides a lot of technical data that used to be extremely hard to find. I now have a softcopy of the Goodyear Farm Tire Catalog and a Hard Copy of the Firestone Farm Tire Catalog. Unfortunately these forums are only helpful if they provide timely answers to users questions and have enough archives to allow research of a wide range of topics that are not easily covered by manufacturers web sites.

Please help keep it running!