Speed up your computer

[Actor]

Originally Posted by xtb

If you have an SSD, do not defrag it. It won't help performance at all and will put unnecessary wear on it.

With no moving parts how can defraging an SSD put any wear on it?

[headhawg]

"Wear" is not mechanical part wear and is not to be taken literally. SSDs use NAND chips that have a limited life in terms of how many times an area can be written to. Defragging causes unnecessary extra writes that will shorten the usable life of an SSD NAND chip. That's the "wear" that xtb was referring to.

[wilderness]

Originally Posted by Inner Dirt

I have satellite internet. I could have the newest and most expensive computer hooked to the internet or a Pentium III and could not tell the difference. Sometimes it is worse than dial up.

Dish has bandwidth limits (day, week and month), and once you exceed them you speed is reduced to to less than 30k (dial ups are 56k). Your only relief form the bandwidth restrictions is in the wee hours.
Even the Dish super-premium service includes the restrictions.
It's a crappy setup.

[Marshall Bennett]

Originally Posted by wilderness

Dish has bandwidth limits (day, week and month), and once you exceed them you speed is reduced to to less than 30k (dial ups are 56k). Your only relief form the bandwidth restrictions is in the wee hours.
Even the Dish super-premium service includes the restrictions.
It's a crappy setup.

Is this also true with cable internet? Lately mine has slowed to almost dial-up speed during peek hours. I've been holding off complaining because of the hassle involved waiting, and then talking to someone that wants to spend an hour on phone.

[Red Knave]

Originally Posted by Marshall Bennett

Is this also true with cable internet?

That can be part of it but the biggest slowdown with cable is that you share it (and hence the bandwidth) with your neighbors. Remember that it's providing TV as well as internet. Around here they are in groups of 8 but I think it can be more.

[Dave Schwartz]

Originally Posted by wilderness

Dish has bandwidth limits (day, week and month), and once you exceed them you speed is reduced to to less than 30k (dial ups are 56k). Your only relief form the bandwidth restrictions is in the wee hours.
Even the Dish super-premium service includes the restrictions.
It's a crappy setup.

Wow! I had no idea they did such a thing! Good to know.

A few years back I was visiting the good folks at HDW in Lexington, KY for about a week. While I was there I thought I would take some time to learn how to program for the Android system.

Imagine my surprise when I found it impossible to download an 80MB installation file successfully from my hotel. The internet service would disconnect about every 15 seconds and the download would terminate.

When I contacted Hilton services they said that this was a precaution against people using bandwidth to download big files. I asked why they advertised "high speed internet" as a feature and the response was "We DO offer high-speed internet."

"Yes, but you can't use it," I said. The response was that you can check your email.

[wilderness]

Dave,
Found this out by accident two years ago.
Some friends have a B&B in remote area. They 'were' letting guests use the wifi.
When I looked at the logs the guest was downloading very large files (likely video), however he told the owners that he was downloading spreadsheets (BS).
Their bandwidth was restricted for the remainder of that month, and the guest visited early in the month.

I live a few miles away and am able to get DSL (my friends B& cannot because they are on a different phone exchange), however my provider (major company) offers a crappy wifi speed (less than 30k) through the same modem that provides my 6-meg Ethernet. They want more $$ for a faster wifi. It's cheaper just to run long Ethernet cables.

I had AT&T for more than decade (different area) and their modems have no such wifi restrictions.

[Actor]

Originally Posted by headhawg

"Wear" is not mechanical part wear and is not to be taken literally. SSDs use NAND chips that have a limited life in terms of how many times an area can be written to. Defragging causes unnecessary extra writes that will shorten the usable life of an SSD NAND chip. That's the "wear" that xtb was referring to.

Good to know. Thanks.

The computer I'm using for internet right now has eMMC 32GB. I'm pretty sure it's solid state but is it different from SSD? Will my drive also wear out due to too many writes?

[headhawg]

The eMMC uses NAND but of a lesser quality than an SSD. But because it operates in a similar fashion to an SSD you wouldn't want to defrag the eMMC either for the reasons I mentioned above.

All drives will wear out eventually but with any luck we're talking several years. The problems with 32GB is that there is only a small amount of NAND to write to. Given how your computer uses it there will likely be more writes to the same cells more often then let's say a 250GB SSD. So theoretically it will "wear out" sooner.

[Marshall Bennett]

Originally Posted by Red Knave

That can be part of it but the biggest slowdown with cable is that you share it (and hence the bandwidth) with your neighbors. Remember that it's providing TV as well as internet. Around here they are in groups of 8 but I think it can be more.

So if it were an issue with my modem it would affect it all the time? Reason I ask is I've had to replace the modem 3 times in maybe 7 years. Something tells me they're not built with quality in the masses they are distributed. Thanks.

[Dave Schwartz]

Originally Posted by wilderness

Dave,
Found this out by accident two years ago.
Some friends have a B&B in remote area. They 'were' letting guests use the wifi.
When I looked at the logs the guest was downloading very large files (likely video), however he told the owners that he was downloading spreadsheets (BS).
Their bandwidth was restricted for the remainder of that month, and the guest visited early in the month.

I live a few miles away and am able to get DSL (my friends B& cannot because they are on a different phone exchange), however my provider (major company) offers a crappy wifi speed (less than 30k) through the same modem that provides my 6-meg Ethernet. They want more $$ for a faster wifi. It's cheaper just to run long Ethernet cables.

I had AT&T for more than decade (different area) and their modems have no such wifi restrictions.

Just amazing. (Including the friend downloading the spreadsheets part.)

When I discussed the issue I faced with Hilton rewards the tech finally said, "Look... We just cannot afford to have guests downloading porn. It kills our bandwidth."

So, instead they have internet for 20 seconds at a time.

BTW, on day 5 of my trip I finally realized that I could just download the files using HDWs internet. So much for being a smart guy, huh? LOL

[whodoyoulike]

This may be helpful.

Recently, I had a tech upgrade my internet service and he used www.speedtest.net to test the computer internet speed. Good site to save. Just click on GO.

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by wilderness

Dish has bandwidth limits (day, week and month), and once you exceed them you speed is reduced to to less than 30k (dial ups are 56k). Your only relief form the bandwidth restrictions is in the wee hours.
Even the Dish super-premium service includes the restrictions.
It's a crappy setup.

My slowness complaint on satellite was not related to getting put on data restriction, it was because of the signal latency that is always there, and the unexplained outages that come without reason. I usually never get put on data restriction as I don't stream anything other than a horse race and I will time it to where I watch as little as possible, once the horses cross the wire I turn it off and won't turn it back on till 0-1 minute to post.

If it is pouring rain I expect no service, if it is sunny with no wind and I have no service that is where I get pissed. Another pisser is trying to stream video many times it won't work even if you run a speed test and you are getting 10mb+. I remember having just 784k hard wired DSL and having all video streaming work fine. I also get all kinds of odd error warnings and things timing out on me when trying to sign in. As an example sometimes I try to sign in to E-bay and I will have to try a dozen times to get in.

[wilderness]

Smaller KU dishes (18") must be adjusted (tweaked) regularly and beyond the initial installation. It will virtually stop the rain-outs.
You may purchase a meter and adjust any dish yourself, however it requires the known satellite azimuth.
Dish uses two LNBs and the azimuth is a setting between the two satellites.
Dish will adjust for free while still under the new installation warranty (don't recall the period), however after warranty, service calls are fee based.
FWIW, even 10-ft dishes that are much heavier require occasional adjustment.

Many installation people are quite capable of initial installations, however are absent any clue when it comes to repairs. It's an industry wide vulnerability.

Video requirements have changed since the early days, as have the speed to DSL and CABLE. A 784kb connection for DSL today would be absurd.

[Inner Dirt]

Originally Posted by wilderness

Video requirements have changed since the early days, as have the speed to DSL and CABLE. A 784kb connection for DSL today would be absurd.

Of course, but I would trade this satellite crap today for the 784kb DSL offered 15 years ago in a heartbeat. As for tweaking the satellite I had a guy come out (I don't belong on roofs anymore) and he showed me he achieved a very high signal. The only problems it cured was functionally in light to medium rain. I have Excede, but from what I learned they all suck. I live in a heavily wooded area at a pretty low elevation of 300 feet.