This is how I usually feel when asked this type of question because there are so many things that impact system speed. The other replies that you received are all valid. Like one of the users suggested, when you are online click the connection icon in the lower right hand and it will tell you your connection speed. If you have a 56k modem you should get upwards of 49000 as a speed. This would be optimal in a rural area. Not getting that? One possibility as suggested before is the drivers for your modem, you should have or get the latest drivers to insure maximum speed. You didn't state what kind of modem you have but here are three links to sites that carry links to most of the modem manufacturers out there, and there are a bunch !!
http://www.1driver.com/
http://www.modemhelp.org/drivers.html
http://www.driverzone.com/modem.html
Got the latest drivers? A sad fact is that the phone lines in a LOT of the rural areas of the state are, can I say Crap!! Bad copper will give you more grief that anything else and there is little that can be done except yell at the local telco to upgrade your service to good lines. and maybe the lines to your house are good and the copper in the house is old and bad, again a recipe for slowness.
Another killer is traffic, and this is really hard to pin down because it could be along our lines or it could be your provider or anywhere in between. As Tony mentioned it is better at different times of the day. I've noticed here that about 3:30 when the kids get out of school things go slower. Apparently they all go home and jump on the chat lines instead of doing homework
I watch our bandwidth a lot and rarely do we exceed 1/3 of our capacity so this is not usually a problem. It's all about bandwidth and with a dialup connection it isn't often pretty.
Another cause is something I've been meaning to address but haven't gotten there yet and that is the nature of this site itself. the users glory in posting pictures of their game and the cam shots and so on. This in and of itself is not bad and in fact the management encourages it, it's one of the things that makes the site interesting. And truly you users are blessed because I know of few sites that allow pretty much free for all posting.
But there is a downside to all this posting we do and let me give you a couple of examples:
A picture that is 300x400 (pixels) and has a size of 72k takes about 19 seconds to display over a 56k connection, That same picture when reduced to 175x130 is at about 14k and takes about 3 seconds to display. Unfortunately we have a LOT of pictures that are submitted that run 100-150k (42 seconds) to upwards of 300+ k. (85 seconds). I have been taught that no page should ever exceed a total weight of 30K. We exceed that here with almost any thread that has pics.
So what can be done. 1) posters should make every effort to keep file sizes down. Most windows platforms have at least on program on them that will allow them to reduce the size of the pictures they submit. If the picture you have to submit is 640x480 and weighs about 300k find the setting in your software to reduce it down to about 300x300. If your software doesn't have the features to allow that, send it to us first and we'll whack it down for you.
I know most of you are interested in Whitetail and not graphic manipulation, but if you'd all just be aware of this and not upload your groovy 1MB shot of the largest buck in existence without thinking about how that will impact those that use the site it will help.
Maybe some of you could tell us what software you have to manipulate pictures and perhaps I can provide suggestions on how to manage your pictures accordingly.
Well there you go, I'll get off my soapbox now. I hope this will help, and if it doesn't at least maybe you'll understand a little better why things are as they are.
Have a great day !!
earllee
