CHARLES ANGELICH wrote in a message to ROY J. TELLASON:

 CA> I also have dialup access at 56k which is _also_ faster than some
 CA> users have and can test with that as well.

Yes.  My former provider never got me connected any faster than 31200.  Now
I  connect at 52000,  just about each and every time.  (Note that this is
with the same modem and software,  one of the reasons for the switch.)

 CA> All dialup users get different _actual_ connect rates from below 
 CA> 40k to as high as 50k which means even on dialup I'm not seeing 
 CA> what _everyone_ sees in terms of delays. I also have a 33.6k setup 
 CA> here for my W31 machine and can test with that using Netscape v4.08
 CA> which I consider close to the "bottom line" for business webpage
 CA> designs. 

 CA> My own personal webpages for tech and entertainment are more
 CA> 'anybrowser friendly'.

Some pages I access are marked that way.

 CA> I have compressed the HTML files and optimized all of the graphics 
 CA> to keep load times for pages as fast as possible.

Some web page makers do this,  others don't care.

 CA> I do test them with LINKS and an older IEx v3.0f that is also on 
 CA> my 33.6k machine. Using LINKS I would guess even an old 14.4k 
 CA> modem on dialup would be useable when viewing my personal 
 CA> webpages. 

 CA> Server stats show that the majority of users are using Windows XP
 CA> and IEx v6 even though my tech website is a 'legacy' website for
 CA> W31 and DOS users (with a few Linux pages added recently). My guess
 CA> is that users are accessing the website from their workplace then 
 CA> taking the information/files home to use on their personal 
 CA> computers?

Could be,  I don't know what most people are using at work these days. 
Last place I was at used NT.

 CA> Newer versions of DreamWeaver MX have built in 'validation' icons 
 CA> for testing webpages for accesibility for impaired persons etc. 
 CA> which tells me that the business of webpage design is growing up 
 CA> and begining to be more user oriented than it has been

Good! :-)

 CA> but there is room for improvement as you and Wayne have pointed out
 CA> here. :-)

RJT> I tried to load a page from the state of PA earlier this
RJT> afternoon. Waited a while, went and read some emails and
RJT> responded to them, went back and looked, went and played a
RJT> couple games of solitaire, and went back and looked again.
RJT> By that time, _45 minutes later!_, it had only gotten
RJT> about 60% of the way here. I gave up at that point. 

 CA> Years ago I tried using NewDeal on an old 80286 machine with an old
 CA> 14.4k modem to browse the Internet using SKIPPER the
 CA> included graphical browser. I recall waiting 15 minutes once for a
 CA> page to fully display and being a bit discouraged. I
 CA> thought about this for awhile and realized that if the only
 CA> place to get the information I needed/wanted was on the
 CA> Internet and I was in a third-world country I would be better off
 CA> with NewDeal than with nothing? NewDeal was sold some time after
 CA> that and AFAIK there are no trial/demo versions anymore but it
 CA> is/was really quite a nice package IMO if you had no
 CA> other options. 

 CA> There is a registry 'hack' for IEx to increase the number of
 CA> sockets open at one time from 4 to 8 (or more) and this same change
 CA> can be applied to OPERA and to Netscape by editing the INI files
 CA> (if I am remembering this correctly). I haven't
 CA> looked into changing this for Mozilla as yet. This is what
 CA> those download speedup programs attempt to do to speedup
 CA> download times and it can be applied directly to the browser with
 CA> no need for the third party software addons. :-) 

Hmm.  Interesting point there.  I've got some software upgrading to do, 
here,  hopefully some of that will help this situation.

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