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Jewish World Review Feb. 21, 2001 / 28 Shevat, 5761

The Computer Maven by James Derk

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Consumer Reports


How to boost your computer speed

http://www.jewishworldreview.com -- BANDWIDTH is to computer nerds like candy is to toddlers. There's never enough.

I was reminded of that when I found a 2400-baud Hayes modem in a drawer at work. Not that long ago I pined for one of those $1,000 babies as I "surfed" CompuServe at $24 per hour at 300 baud.

Now 100 times that speed seems a bit slow.

In my quest to increase the speed of my cable-modem at home, I discovered a few things that even non-computer folks can use to improve the performance of high-speed connections.

If you have a cable modem or a DSL connection (modem users need not apply here), you should surf on over to John Navas's Tuning Guide and follow some very simple tweaks.

Once there ( http://cable-dsl.home.att.net) you can download a simple program that will automatically adjust a couple of settings in your Windows registry. Most users should select the "Normal Latency" setting under "Method 1." Click on the blue link and save the file to your hard drive. (If you previously have tweaked your computer to make your modem run faster, use Method 2.) First thing, you need to do is make a backup of your Windows Registry file. So hit START, then RUN. Type "regedit" in the box (without quotes) and hit OK. Once the Registry Editor starts, hit REGISTRY and EXPORT. Give the file a name like "backup" and save it. Then close Registry Editor.

Find the file you downloaded from the Web. Double-click on it and reboot when it tells you to.

I saw an increase of 21 percent in download speed as measured by uploading three large files to a local and distant FTP site. My upload speed changed 18 percent for the better.

As Navas notes, making this change won't help online gaming (your online performance there is more a factor of your "latency" or how fast a packet of data travels on your ISP), but could improve performance in Web browsing and downloading. Remember, though, this is for computers with dedicated, high-speed connections, not modems.

The rest of the site offers a great deal of information about security, virus threats, Trojan horses and all manner of cool things.

WEEKLY WEB WONDER: Speaking of Trojans, a coworker led to me to a site that offers a shareware program that will scan and clean Trojan horse programs from your computer. Head to www.moosoft.com and hit DOWNLOAD on left side.


James Derk is computer columnist for Scripps Howard News Service. Comment by clicking here.

Up

02/12/01: How to set up a LAN party
01/30/01: Used computers... picture.exe...other problems
01/23/00: Cool computer tricks

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