I do not indulge in any of the online activities for which broadband is essential, but there are times when faster download would be an advantage, such as downloading photos in mail attachments. I have noticed an advertisement for OnSpeed, which would speed up my dial-up connection apparently by a factor of about 10. Do you have any experience of this system? Derek Roughton
I reviewed OnSpeed in January 2004, and while its technology will have improved, the principle remains the same. OnSpeed works by compressing web pages before it sends them to you. This is not a new idea -- it's how AOL worked reasonably quickly on dial-up -- and it can be useful. However, it does lower the quality of the pages (the compression loses some information) and it doesn't help with things that are heavily compressed. It can be set up to work with a mail server, but I don't think it would be very useful for your purposes.
The Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against Turbodial Ltd (trading as OnSpeed) in March, and you can read its report here.
