Topic: IE Tip for Broadbanders

[Simon]

This is quite an interesting tip, picked up from Practical Internet magazine.  

Apparently, if you have broadband, and set your cache disk space to it's lowest setting (1Mb), this actually results in pages loading faster, as it's quicker to download pages from the site, using BB, than it is for your PC to search for the page components on your hard drive.

I've tried this, with Mozilla, and it seems to have an effect.  I'll try with IE later as well.  

[Sandra]

Surely with seek speeds on hard drives of a few nano seconds that cant be right Simon  
Are you sure that it was faster  

[Simon]

Dunno, Sandra.  Perhaps it just seemed a bit quicker at the time.   I just said what I read.    

If it's cobblers, maybe we should let Practical Internet know?    

[Sandra]

Ok we will send Adept and Lobo down to sort then out that should scare em

[Simon]

Don't want to spit on your chips, Sandra, but I've been using IE, with the new cache setting, and it definitely seems to load the pages quicker.  Perhaps a trial before the lynching may be in order?

[Sandra]

Speaking of chips  
Is it faster if its got a slower cpu I wonder as even with BB I always thought that the slowest part of the PC was the internet connection  

[Adept]

Practical Internet probably read it on here Simon

I told Clive about this on Pals ages ago.

http://pc-pals.com/index.php?board=45;action=display;threadid=1833;start=0

[Clive]

Oh I remember that funny half hour!  

[Simon]

Well this is slightly more radical in that they are suggesting you reduce your cache to just 1Mb, not merely 100Mb, as was discussed before.  Perhaps that was so as not to give Clive palpitations, Sean?  

[Adept]

I have to admit 1MB does seem a little low

[Tony]

OK whats considered the ideal setting for us lowly bums on a 56 or 64k connection? Mine cache is set at 920mb

Yo, 192/350 registrations for Broadband not long now, but tell me the ideal settings just the same  

[Simon]

When I was on 56k Tony, I had mine set to 300Mb, if I remember correctly.  Sean will put you right, but I don't think it's all that critical, as long as everything works OK.  

[Adept]

As I understand it Tony, you need to set it to a value small enough to allow the file to be searched for and loaded faster than you could have downloaded the same file from the 'Net.

Set the cache to too low a value and you won't get the benefit as more stuff will be downloaded from the 'Net rather than coming out of the cache.

Obviously the size of cache is dependant on the processor speed, hard drive speed and Internet connection speed variables.

I don't seem to be able to find a site with a handy calculator for cache size, so I'm afraid you're going to have to suck it and see

[Tony]

Well Simon what do you think of that, Adept has let me down ......I'm used to definitive answers from him  :'(

[Simon]

Well, as he says, I'm not sure there is a definative answer.  I certainly haven't read of one, and it is something I look for when reading articles of that nature.  

It's surprising, that given all the tweaks and tricks discussed in various mediums, the 'ideal cache setting' does not appear to exist, although there is a program called Cacheman which claims to do the job.

Someone will now come along and prove us all wrong!      

Cacheman