Accelerate Me!
A Review of Net Accelerator
Ron Enderland
IMSI’s Net Accelerator purports to make your browsing up to twelve times faster.
"How?" you may ask.
The average modem works hard when downloading text and images. When your browser gives you the "document done" message, that modem sits there doing nothing until you go to the next page. Then, the process starts all over.
Net Accelerator makes that puppy work harder, downloading text and graphics from pages linked to the one that you are currently viewing. Your modem light stays on more or less constantly while you surf, filling your hard disk cache with graphics and text that will load much faster than info that is being directly downloaded.
It works quite well, making a significant difference in loading time. My ancient Pentium 90 system with 20 MB of RAM isn’t helped as much as a hotter system, due to waiting for the processor itself to catch up, but surfing is still much faster.
You’ll need to remember a couple of things, though, to maximize your performance. First off, if you’re a Netscape user, you’ll want a good sized cache on your hard disk, say at least ten MB. This will keep your downloaded info from constantly being overwritten. Second, you’ll want to hit the "Pause" button when downloading a big file from an FTP site. Otherwise, your file will come in slowly, what with that modem doing all that extra work. Just remember to hit "Resume" when you’re finished.
Installation only requires 2.5 MB of disk space, a pleasant respite from bloated apps.
Internet Hotel Scorecard
| Product: | Net Accelerator |
| Company: | IMSI |
| Cost: | $29.95 |
System Requirements:
IBM PC compatible 486 or better,
Microsoft Windows 95,
Minimum 8MB of RAM (16MB recommended),
Internet access required,
Netscape Navigator 3.0 or later,
or Microsoft Internet Explorer 3.0 or later.
Breakdown:
Ease of Use 5
Quality 4
Concept 5
Interface 4
Overall Score:
Copyright © 1997 InfoMedia, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.